2 - Adrian
Twenty minutes since she said Lisbon. Twenty minutes of smiling while the word eats through my chest like acid.
The redhead at table twelve is drowning in her own birthday.
I see it the moment she walks through La Sirena's doors.
The forced smile, the way she keeps touching the new ring on her finger like it's burning her, the desperate brightness in her laugh that says she's trying too hard to be happy about turning thirty.
"Mi amor," I say, sliding up to their table with the warmth turned all the way up, "nobody celebrates a birthday properly without champagne that belongs in a vault.
" I signal to the server without looking.
"But tonight, the first bottle is on me.
Because anyone who looks that beautiful while plotting their escape deserves a co-conspirator. "
The whole table laughs. Her friends relax, she blushes, and the tension breaks like a fever.
The truth wrapped in charm, my specialty.
By the time the champagne arrives, she's genuinely smiling, telling me about the promotion she just got, the move to Miami, the life she's building.
I make her feel like the only person in this packed club, and for these few minutes, she is.
This is the easy part. The table of executives in the corner need their egos massaged.
I give them a story about a senator who was here last week, make them feel like players.
Behind them, the Montague crew holds court at their usual table, pretending they're here for the show instead of the money they're washing through our books, giving us our fair portion, of course.
I give them nothing but a respectful nod. They know better than to expect more.
The air reeks of expensive cologne mixed with something sharper. Gun oil from whoever's carrying in the VIP section. Normal Friday night in Miami.
Across the floor, I catch the new boy fumbling with a complicated order, his hands shaking slightly. I drift over, smooth as smoke.
"Carlos, hermano," I say, steadying the tray with one hand while my other lands light on his shoulder.
"Remember what I told you? The crowd's here to have fun, not to judge you.
They're too drunk to notice if you mix up their orders anyway.
" I wink, encouraging him with the kind of warmth that makes people stand taller.
"You've got this. Best server I've hired in months. "
His whole posture changes. Spine straightening, smile returning. By the time he walks away, he's moving with confidence again.
The debutante who's clearly on her first fake ID gets a wink and a mocktail that looks lethal but won't get me shut down. The lieutenant from the port authority gets his usual envelope slipped into his coat pocket while I tell him a joke about his wife's sister.
Love is a weapon you perfect. I learned that young, when making the right people happy meant my family ate that week, when charm was the difference between protection and a bullet.
Now it's muscle memory. A touch, a word, a perfectly timed smile.
It costs me nothing to make everyone feel special.
It's as natural as breathing, this warmth that fills the room, makes La Sirena feel less like a nightclub and more like coming home.
Tomás rushes past with a tray held high, steady now after three weeks on the job. "That thing you taught me worked," he says, breathless and grinning. "Table six tipped me fifty dollars just for remembering their daughter's name."
"Of course it worked," I tell him, straightening his collar like an older brother would. "People don't pay for service, mijo. They pay to matter."
This is what I do. What I've always done. Make people matter, make them seen, make them feel like tonight is the most important night of their lives. The warmth isn't performance. It's real, bone-deep, the only thing about me that's never been complicated.
The easy thing. The natural thing.
Everything except her.
Lisbon.
The word hits me between one smile and the next, sudden as a knife between ribs. I'm laughing at someone's joke, the punchline already fading from memory, but underneath, my mind has locked onto that single word and won't let go.
A month ago, she mentioned it casually. So casually I almost missed it.
"I think about leaving sometimes," she'd said, wiping down the bar after close.
"Lisbon, maybe." Like she was talking about changing her hair, trying a new restaurant.
I'd noted it the way I note everything about her.
The way she prefers her coffee bitter, how she rolls her left shoulder when it's sore, the particular silence that means she's thinking about the past.
But tonight she said it differently. "I'm leaving." Present tense. Decided. The passport paperwork already started.
The coffee I brought her earlier sits empty on the bar, pushed aside with the other finished cups. She drank it, like always. But somehow it feels like she's already gone.
I smile at the investment banker telling me about his boat, make the right sounds at the right moments, but underneath I'm spiraling through the timeline.
Four weeks ago: idle mention. Three weeks ago: I brought her coffee and she seemed settled, rooted.
Two weeks ago: she fixed that vintage lighter with her jeweler's tools, completely absorbed, completely here.
One week ago: nothing, no signs, no tells I could read.
Tonight: "I'm leaving."
How did I miss it? How did a month pass with this growing inside her and I didn't see it?
I know there's a freckle below her left ear.
I know she switched perfumes in March, noticed it the day she changed it.
I know when she's three drinks behind versus truly angry by the exact angle of tension in her shoulders.
I know the difference between her 2 a.m. exhaustion and her 3 a.m. second wind.
I know her better than anyone has ever bothered to know her.
But I didn't know this. Didn't see it taking root, growing from thought to plan to fact.
"You okay, hermano?" someone asks, and I realize I've been quiet too long.
"Perfect," I say, and the smile comes so easily it scares me. "Just thinking about how lucky we all are to be here tonight."
I am two men in this moment. The one speaking, charming, warm. He's real, has always been real, will always be real. And the other underneath, the one whose chest has gone tight and won’t loosen, who tracks her movement behind the bar while maintaining three different conversations. He's real too.
Two men. One who loves everyone a little, spreads warmth like breathing. And one who loves her too much, with a precision that borders on pathology.
She's mixing something complicated at the far end of the bar.
I can tell by the way she holds her shoulders, the particular focus that means she's counting pours.
In thirty seconds she'll reach for the bitters.
In forty-five she'll slide it to the customer without expression.
In a minute she'll move to the next order, efficient and cold and perfect.
I watch her hands move, imagine them on my skin, imagine the sounds she'd make if I pressed her against that bar and showed her exactly why leaving isn't an option.
I know her patterns like my own heartbeat. But I didn't know about Lisbon until it was already real.
"Adrian!" Someone calls my name, needs my attention, my warmth, my easy smile.
I give it to them. Of course I do. The surface Adrian never falters, never drops the mask, never lets anyone see that underneath, the other Adrian is taking apart the last month minute by minute, looking for the moment she decided to leave me.
Leave Miami, I correct myself. She's leaving Miami.
But in our world, what's yours stays yours. And Isa became mine nine years ago. She just doesn't know it yet. Hell, she thinks we only met five years ago.
"You're leaving early."
Marisol catches me near the office as the crowd starts thinning. She's got that look, half-amused, half-suspicious, that means she's about to be a pain in my ass in the way only family can be.
"Since when does Adrian Marín leave before the lights come up?
" She leans against the doorframe, champagne glass dangling from her fingers.
Non-alcoholic, of course. Behind her, one of the Montague soldiers watches us with the kind of attention that costs extra.
"You sick? Dying? Finally develop a sense of self-preservation? "
"Maybe I'm just getting old, princesa." I give her the grin that usually ends this kind of questioning. "Can't party like I used to."
"Bullshit." But she's smiling. "You were twenty-five going on forty-five. Now you're thirty-one going on… what? Twenty? Having a midlife crisis in reverse?"
Throughout this entire exchange, I track Isa without looking like I'm tracking her. She's moved from the main bar to restocking bottles. Twelve feet away. Now fifteen. Heading toward the supply room. She'll be gone for three minutes, maybe four if she takes her time.
This is muscle memory, years of practice. I know where she is in any room the way I know where the exits are, where the security cameras point, where the deals go down. It's not conscious anymore, just part of how I exist in any space she occupies.
"Hello? Earth to Adrian?" Marisol waves a hand in front of my face. "See, this is what I mean. You're here but not here. Very unlike you."
"Just tired," I say, but something must slip because her eyes narrow.
"Tired," she repeats, like she's tasting the word for lies. "Adrian Marín, who once stayed up for thirty-six hours straight to make sure my twenty-first birthday party was perfect, is tired."
The observation hits too close to something true. I deflect, turning it back on her. "How's married life treating you? Nico keeping you out of trouble?"