24 - Adrian
Iknow exactly what nightmare grips her. The sun-bleached stones, the blood spreading dark at the edges, the silence after everything went wrong. The truth burns in my throat as Isa thrashes beside me, fighting demons I could name with a few words if I weren’t too much of a coward to speak them.
Her skin burns fever-hot under my palm when I try to soothe her.
Sweat beads on her forehead in the moonlight cutting through my bedroom windows.
Days since the family tore itself apart over us.
Days of her sleeping beside me, each one worse than the last as the past claws its way up through her dreams.
"No." The word breaks into a whimper. Her body arcs off the bed, hands clawing at nothing. "Please, no."
I reach for her shoulder, gentle, but she flinches away like my touch burns. Her breathing comes in sharp gasps, each one catching on something I can't see but know intimately. The past. The thing that happened when she was fourteen, that crushing weight she carries without understanding its shape.
The truth of what torments her sits heavy in my chest like a stone.
I hold the key to every nightmare that tears through her sleep, every fragment that surfaces to torture her.
One conversation could free her from this hell, but the words stay locked in my throat.
I could end this torture. Could explain what really happened that day, how the accident wasn't what she thinks, how I was there, how I…
But to tell her would be to lose her. To stay silent is to watch her break. The coward in me chooses her breaking over her leaving.
"Isa." I keep my voice soft, not wanting to startle her awake. "Mi amor, you're safe."
But she's still caught in it, thrashing harder now.
Her elbow catches me in the ribs as she fights whatever horror plays behind her closed eyes.
The sheet tangles around her legs as she kicks, revealing the bruises I left on her thighs two nights ago.
Marks of possession that mock me now as she pulls away from my touch.
Her eyes snap open, wild and unfocused. For three heartbeats she doesn't know where she is, doesn't recognize me, sees only whatever horror her mind conjured. Then recognition floods back, and with it comes something worse than fear.
Shame.
She pulls away, scrambling backward until she hits the headboard. "I need…" Her voice cracks. "I need to go."
"Stay. Let me…"
But she's already moving, sliding out of bed.
My shirt hangs loose on her frame as she gathers her things, not looking at me, building walls with every movement.
The sheets still smell like her. Clean soap mixed with my cologne, with sex, with the sweat from her nightmares.
The indent of her body beside me still holds warmth.
I press my palm to it like I can pull her back through touch alone.
"Isa, please."
She pauses at the doorway I cut between our apartments last week — the renovation sketches made real within days of her approving them, because when Isa says yes to something, I don't give her time to reconsider.
The edge is still splintered, waiting for trim, the door hung but not yet painted.
I see the tension in her jaw even from behind, the way her hand hovers over the raw edge of the doorframe.
"I just need some time alone."
The words are so calm, so reasonable, so unassailable, as if she hasn't spent the last hour seizing in my arms.
I could let her go. I could be decent, give her space, play the part of the progressive lover who knows when to keep his hands to himself. But something old and mean and terrified inside me claws up my throat. The words come out harder than I intend: "Why?"
She stops cold, the muscles in her back bunching beneath the thin fabric of my T-shirt. I imagine the heat of her skin, the way it slicked with sweat under my palms fifteen minutes ago. Her hair is stuck to her neck, a dark halo. She doesn't turn around.
"Is this about those people from the gala?" I say, forcing my voice to sound casual, as if I don't give a shit whether she fucks off to her apartment and never returns. "The Lins?"
I don’t even care that I’m lying by omission, implying I have no idea how important Meiling’s parents are to Isa. I just need to get her talking. Need her to stay.
“Isa, talk to me.”
She lifts her chin a fraction, and in that moment I know I’ve lost her—at least for tonight.
"It's Juliet,” she says. Her voice isn't the hollow, echoing thing I expected. There's a rawness in it. “I don’t know where she is. She isn’t answering her calls, she isn’t at her hotel, wasn’t at La Sirena yesterday.
She’s missing and I…I think it’s my fault. ”
Dammit. She carries too much guilt, always blaming herself for the downfalls of others.
My fists clench in frustration, and Isa clocks the movement. Her posture stiffens, and her voice is ice.
"I will sleep in my own apartment tonight, Adrian. Don’t test me on this."
There’s no anger in it, no edge; just a line drawn, clear and unyielding.
She flees to her apartment next door, bare feet silent on the floor.
The new door closes with a soft click. Not slammed, which would mean anger I could work with.
Just closed, deliberate and final. The lock engaging — the lock I put on her side of that door, because even I knew better than to build her a doorway without one — sounds like a gunshot.
My hands shake. Actually shake. They didn’t even do that when Efrén died. This is what losing her would feel like. This preview of emptiness, of her existing somewhere I can't reach, can't touch, can't protect. My chest caves with the certainty that I won't survive it if she truly leaves.
I sit on the edge of the bed, listening to her move through her apartment. Every footstep carries through our shared wall, each sound a small torture. I can hear her breathing through the wall. Ragged, broken, the sound scraping against my ribs.
The old surveillance holes call to me from across the room. Three neat apertures I drilled weeks ago, back when watching her was all I had. We're past that now. We sleep in the same bed, share the same space, breathe the same air. Those holes should be nothing but shameful history.
But she's hurting on the other side of that wall, alone with nightmares I could explain but won't. The need to see her, to make sure she's safe, overwhelms every promise I've made to myself about being better.
The old hunger to watch her rises fresh and immediate.
I move to the wall, pressing my eye to the uppermost hole. She's in her kitchen, standing at the counter with her arms wrapped around herself. Not making food, not moving, just standing there shaking. The overhead light catches tears on her face she'd never let me see directly.
This is care, I tell myself. Making sure she doesn't hurt herself, doesn't spiral too deep.
She's mine to watch, mine to protect, mine to worship from whatever distance she demands.
If watching through walls is all she'll allow, then I'll take it.
I'll take any scrap of her existence rather than nothing at all.
She moves to her couch, curling into herself. Through the lower hole, I watch her count on her fingers. One two three four five six seven eight. The pattern she uses to calm herself. It's not working. Her breathing stays ragged, her body tight with tension.
My phone buzzes. Logan, asking about something irrelevant while I'm dying watching the only woman who matters shake apart twenty feet away. The family business can burn.
I ignore it. Nothing matters except the woman I love. I scoff. Love didn't fix me. It just gave me better reasons for the same sickness.
Dawn bleeds through my windows, marking hours of watching her through the wall. My body aches from standing vigil, but I can't stop. Won't stop. Not until I know she's safe. My room still smells like her, ghost traces that make my cock ache even as my chest hollows out.
By ten, I can't stand the silence. Isa hasn't emerged from her apartment, hasn't answered my texts, and Juliet's absence gnaws at me with fresh urgency. If I can't fix what's breaking Isa from the inside, at least I can solve the external threat.
I make the calls, working through my network. It’s mid-afternoon by the time I call the marina manager, another man with eyes everywhere who owes me a favor. This is the twentieth call I’ve made, or maybe the thirtieth—I stopped counting hours ago.
"Adrian, my friend," Roberto answers on the second ring. "What can I do for Miami's favorite son?"
"I’m looking for a young woman, pretty if you like the innocent look, blonde, probably nervous. You seen anyone like that?”
“Oh, we’re all looking for a beautiful young blonde, my friend,” he says, chuckling at his wit.
I sigh. “I’m looking for a specific woman. She might have been asking questions in the last few days."
Roberto's voice drones about boat charters while my mind replays Isa's whimper from her nightmare. "Ah, sí. The pretty one with the trust fund accent. She was here yesterday, very insistent about getting to one of the outer islands."
My jaw tightens. "Which island?"
"Caya Bacanao," he says, and my blood freezes.
That island is owned by Santiago Zayas. What the fuck is Juliet doing traveling out to that psycho’s private property?
Roberto is still droning on. “I told her that’s a private compound, no access to the public. Told her no legitimate charter goes there, but she kept asking. Finally sent her to talk to Hugo at slip forty-five. He runs a less official service, if you understand."
I understand perfectly. Juliet went looking for passage to Santiago Zayas’ private island. The psychopath whose family wants to destroy the Delgado empire, scavenging at the mess Jorge left behind when he died.
Why is Juliet trying to get to the Zayas? Is she betraying us? Is she siding with our enemies?
I picture her smile, her face, her innocence. She’d be the perfect mole, the last person anyone would suspect.