23 - Isa #2
Marisol slams her fist against her side.
“Because it’s not the same! Nico and I? We fight, we fuck, we get over it.
You and Daphne? You meld into each other, but you don’t bring the walls down on everyone else.
Logan and Wren? They keep it quiet, out of sight.
But Adrian and Isa? They’re an extinction-level event. Don’t you get it?”
Gunner doesn’t answer. He looks at her with something like pity, which only makes her angrier.
“You’re afraid,” he finally says.
She blinks, thrown off by the accuracy of it, then doubles down. “So what if I am? Maybe you should be afraid too.”
For a moment, all three of them go silent. The front of house is empty except for us. I can hear the electrical hum of the fridges, the beat of the quiet music, and the scraping of Marisol’s stiletto on the tile.
“I thought you were my friend, Gunner,” Marisol says, and her voice is small again. “My ride-or-die. The Robin to my Batman. The Ernie to my Bert. The—”
“I get it,” he says softly.
“But you chose them. You’ve barely known Adrian for a year."
“I’ve known him nine years,” he corrects.
She huffs. “Same thing. And Isa? You’ve known her, what, a week?”
“Five years.”
“But you’ve known me forever. You saved me, Gunner, saved me from myself, from the people who wanted me dead, from my fucking father. You were there when Gabriel left. And now you’re abandoning me.”
I can tell that she’s fighting back tears. The jokes and quips pour from her mouth, but it’s all defense, the only defense she has.
I watch Adrian during the exchange, and that's when I see it. He's performing perfect composure. The warm host who lets conflict roll off him, already moving to deflect with a story or redirect with charm. To everyone else, he looks unbothered. The consummate King of La Sirena, unshakeable.
But I see through it. I see the micro-tension in his jaw, the way his fingers curl against his thigh with enough force to leave bruises, the careful breath he takes before responding.
When a server drops a tray, his hand twitches toward where his gun would be.
The predator always alive under the perfect host, even in pain.
He's watching his rebuilt family destroy itself, and the agony of it is killing him even as he refuses to let it show.
Adrian's gaze finds mine across the room, and for one suspended moment, his mask drops completely.
I see everything. The grief, the rage, the exhaustion of holding everyone together while they tear each other apart.
My body responds instantly, that familiar heat mixed with crushing guilt.
My pussy clenches, still swollen and unsatisfied from the bathroom, my nipples hardening against my shirt.
Even now, even as I'm destroying everything he's built, I want him to pin me against the bar and fuck me until I can't remember my own name.
Even after last night, after this morning, even after having him inside me hours ago, I'm desperate, my body's betrayal of what my mind knows: I'm the poison causing his pain, and my touch would only burn him more.
Knowing about his brother and sister makes this unbearable.
Everything he told me that night with whiskey on his breath about Efrén dying in that alley, about Zoila disappearing into foster care.
He lost his birth family, watched it scatter and die while he was too young to stop it.
The siblings torn away by violence and the system, the family table empty.
He spent years reconstructing something from nothing, gathering these people one by one, creating the loud warm table his Cuban mother would have loved.
This wasn't just a found family. It was his deliberate recreation of what was stolen from him.
Adrian makes some light comment that neither Gunner nor Marisol really hears, already backing away from each other with rigid postures, clearly harboring deep hurts.
He keeps the mask perfect as he moves through the room, touching tables, adjusting lights, the consummate host. But I track the effort it takes.
The slightly too-careful placement of his hands.
The pause before each warm greeting. The way his eyes go dark when he thinks no one's looking.
That dangerous edge that reminds me this is the man who's killed for me, who locks doors to keep me close, and I'm shattering the only thing that keeps him human.
The guilt becomes too much, crushing me from the inside.
I need to hear Juliet's voice, need my one friend who might understand what it feels like to be the poison that ruins everything good it touches.
I slip into the supply closet. The same one where I touched myself thinking of Adrian weeks ago, when everything was simpler.
I pull out my phone with trembling fingers.
The call doesn't connect. Not busy, not declined. Just nothing. Dead air where her warm voice should be.
I try again. Same nothing. Check my messages from yesterday. None delivered. Every attempt to reach her bounces back into silence. My pulse speeds up, that familiar taste of copper flooding my mouth as I try her hotel line, the backup number she gave me weeks ago.
"I last saw Miss Price yesterday," the desk clerk informs me when I ask. "Would you like to leave a message?"
Yesterday. Right after our conversation at the pier, right after I told her to confront Santiago Zayas.
To face her monster instead of letting him haunt her.
The memory of her laughter echoes. Bright and trusting, the sound she made when I pulled the knife on that creep.
She trusted me. Called me fearless. And I might have sent her straight into Santiago Zayas' hands, gift-wrapped with my terrible advice.
What if she actually did it? What if she took my drunken words about facing fears and walked straight into Santiago's reach?
The thought makes me sick, my stomach clenching.
Sweet Juliet who chose my friendship over Rosetti blood, who laughed at my violence, who trusted me enough to share her terror.
I might have sent her to him. My advice might have delivered her to the exact monster she was running from.
The phone slips from my numb fingers, clattering on the closet floor. Another person I've failed. Another soul I've pushed toward disaster just by being in their orbit. The pattern is so clear it burns.
I stand alone in the supply closet where I once came apart thinking of Adrian, and the truth crashes over me in waves. I am the poison that touches everything and leaves it ruined.
Meiling, dead at fourteen, those fragments of blood and stone that won't resolve into meaning but confirm something terrible happened. I was there, I was responsible somehow, and she's gone forever. Everything I touched that day turned to tragedy.
Adrian's family, shredding itself over me.
Gunner and Marisol turning vicious, former friends who protected each other now ready to spill blood over their divide.
The warmth drained from every interaction, allegiances drawn in invisible blood.
The siblings he lost, the family he rebuilt to replace them, and I'm destroying it with my poisonous presence.
Every person I touch in this family pays for knowing me.
And now Juliet. Vanished after I told her to confront her fears, gone dark after I pushed her toward danger.
My advice might have killed her. The one person who made me laugh, who linked arms with me like we were normal friends instead of damaged women in a world of monsters.
Another friend lost to the poison that spreads from everything I touch.
My hands, my words, my very existence. All of it toxic to anyone who gets close.
My control fails on every front. The thing I built my entire identity on, the rigid discipline that was supposed to keep everyone safe from what I am.
I can't control the past breaking through in fragments that make no sense.
Can't control the damage I'm doing to Adrian's world, to this dangerous, beautiful family that took me in.
Can't control whatever's happened to Juliet in Santiago's territory.
Can't even control my own body, desperate and wet for the man I'm destroying.
And somewhere in Miami's dangerous night, Juliet might be paying the ultimate price for my friendship, while Adrian masks his agony with perfect smiles, and the family that saved us both tears itself apart with me at the center of the wound.