26 - Isa
The Miami streets blur past as I stumble from La Sirena, my lungs burning like I’m breathing fire. Adrian’s words chase me. Years of lies snapping at my heels with teeth sharp enough to draw blood. My body moves without permission, feet pounding pavement while my mind fractures.
One two three four five. The numbers scatter before I can catch them. One two. No. Eight seven, that's backwards. I can't even count anymore. My most reliable defense crumbles when I need it most.
I killed Meiling.
The thought slams into me again, making me stumble. A couple swerves to avoid me, the man muttering something in Spanish. The knife went in. Blood on gray stone, too bright in summer sun. Adrian watched it happen, watched me run, then covered it up while I was too high to remember clearly.
Fourteen fucking years. Every gentle touch, every moment I thought meant something. All of it built on him watching me at my absolute worst and deciding to keep me like some broken thing he could fix.
Sweat stings my eyes, drips down my back, soaking through my shirt in the humid Miami night.
The salt wind pulls me forward like gravity, toward the water, toward the place where everything seems to lead.
My legs cramp from the sprint but I push through.
Past closed shops, past normal people living normal lives while my entire existence reveals itself as a murderer.
And worse, so much worse: he loved me because of the blood on my hands, not despite it.
A stitch knifes through my side. I have to slow, have to bend forward, hands on my knees while I try to remember how lungs work. The marina spreads ahead, boats bobbing in their slips like teeth in a dark mouth. The wood creaks under my feet as I stumble onto the dock.
Then I see it.
Something bobs in the water near one of the docks, caught against a post.
A canvas bag. Tan with leather straps.
My body goes cold despite the sweat coating my skin. That's Juliet's bag. The one she carries everywhere, always stuffed with books and sunglasses and that lip gloss that smells like vanilla.
"That your friend's?"
I spin, nearly losing my balance. A dock worker in a stained shirt coils rope nearby, watching me with mild interest.
My throat closes. "You saw her?"
"Blonde girl, pretty? Yeah, took a charter boat out days ago." He points toward the horizon where darkness swallows the water. "Hugo's boat. Headed for those outer islands. Haven't seen either of them return."
Days. The same time she went dark.
"No return?" The words scrape out raw. "You're sure?"
"Would've noticed. Only three boats make that run, and Hugo's still out there." He shrugs, already dismissing me. "Rich kids do that sometimes. Take a boat, decide to island hop. Get high and lose their bags overboard.” He sniffs. “Happens more than you’d think."
Santiago Zayas has a compound on one of those islands. The monster she went to confront because I told her to face what haunted her.
My knees hit the dock hard enough to split skin through my jeans. The pain barely registers through what's crashing through me. I crawl to the edge, have to lean over, have to grab that bag even though touching it will make this real.
The canvas is waterlogged, heavy. I drag it up, water streaming from its corners. Inside, her wallet. Her sunglasses, one lens cracked. That vanilla lip gloss floating in three inches of harbor water.
"No." The word tears from my throat. Then louder: "No, no, NO!"
Two friends. God, I've killed two friends.
The truth slams into me, stealing what's left of my breath. First Meiling at fourteen, blood spreading while I ran like a coward. Now Juliet, who trusted me enough to take my drunken wisdom. Who went to that monster because I told her to stop running from shadows.
One two three. I can't count. Can't breathe.
The dock spins under me as I rock back on my heels.
Everyone I let close dies. Everyone who trusts me pays for that mistake with their life.
I tried to keep distance for exactly this reason, built walls to protect people from the poison I carry, and the two times I let someone through.
Bile rises. I barely make it to the edge before I'm vomiting into the harbor, my body rejecting this truth even as my mind accepts it. When there's nothing left to throw up, I dry heave until my ribs ache.
My phone shakes in my trembling hand. I need to tell someone.
Need to confess this second death before it eats me alive.
Juliet talked about her sister constantly.
Eleanor, married to Leo Rosetti, the woman who sacrificed everything to protect Juliet from their world.
There must be a way to reach them through La Sirena's connections.
Through Logan's contacts, or the family network.
Nico. He is one of them.
I dial Nico's emergency number with numb fingers. He answers on the third ring, voice sharp despite the hour.
"Isa? What's wrong?"
"I need Eleanor Rosetti's number. Leonardo's wife. New York." My voice sounds dead even to me.
"What's happened?"
"Juliet's dead. I need to tell her sister."
Silence. Then: “I’ll deal with this. I’ll tell Logan, we’ll contact Eleanor and Leo. I’ll meet you at La Sirena and we’ll sort it out. Make a plan.”
“Give me the number, Nico,” I repeat, and something in my lifeless calm must sound convincing because he only pauses for a few more moments.
"I'll text you the contact," he says. “Tell me what she says then come straight to the club. I’ll wake Logan and Marisol.”
The number appears seconds later. My stomach churns as I dial, knowing I'm about to destroy another person's world.
Some sliver of me — the cold part, the part that counts exits and tests locks twice — knows exactly what this is.
A verdict with no body. No witness. Nothing but a floating bag and my own guilt for evidence.
I pronounce it anyway. Punishment doesn't wait for proof. Not when I'm the one who deserves it.
She answers on the second ring. "Hello?"
"Mrs. Rosetti? Eleanor? This is Isa Navarro, from Miami. Juliet's friend."
"Isa? Have you heard from her?"
"She's dead." The words tear from my throat like glass shards.
Eleanor's sharp intake of breath. Then silence so complete I hear my own blood pounding.
"What?" Her voice breaks on the single word.
"Juliet went to Santiago Zayas. Because I told her to. Days ago. She never came back."
"You're lying." But Eleanor's voice wavers, already knowing I'm not.
"Her bag is floating in the harbor. The boat she took never returned. I told her to confront him, to face what haunted her, and she listened to me." My free hand claws at the dock, splinters embedding in my palm. "She's gone because of me."
The silence stretches, then Eleanor's voice turns to ice. "You told my sister to go to that monster?"
"I was drunk. Stupid. I thought…" My voice cracks completely. "It doesn't matter what I thought. She trusted me and now she's dead."
"Where are you?" Each word precise as a blade.
"Miami. Come. Bring whoever you need to bring." I'm shaking so hard I can barely hold the phone. "I deserve whatever punishment you decide. I won't run."
"We'll be there by morning." The Rosetti machinery already grinding in her voice, and I know blood will flow. "And Isa? If you disappear before we arrive, we'll burn down everything you've ever touched to find you."
"I won't run. Come and do what you need to do."
The line goes dead.
I've just declared war without meaning to. The New York Rosettis descending on Miami, Adrian's carefully balanced world about to explode, and all because I gave advice I had no right to give. The sick irony that my attempt at friendship has brought catastrophe to everyone's door.
But they deserve to deliver whatever justice Juliet deserves. I deserve whatever they'll do.
The fury builds as I sit on this dock with Juliet's waterlogged bag in my lap. Not at myself, but at Adrian.
Fourteen years he kept this from me. Fourteen years of letting me live in fog, not knowing what I'd done. But worse: fourteen years he kept the truth from Meiling's parents. Let them wonder, grieve, search for answers while he played God with everyone's lives.
They never knew their daughter died with a knife in her gut and her best friend's hands covered in blood. He denied them even the cold comfort of knowing what happened, how it happened, who was responsible.
My body still wants him. Even now, even knowing everything, my traitorous flesh remembers his hands, his mouth, the safety I thought I'd found in his arms.
But that warmth was all calculation. He made me love him while hiding the worst truth of my life.
I push myself up, legs barely holding. One two three four five. No. The numbers won't save me. There's only one thing left to do.
Dawn bleeds pink across the sky as I stand outside the Lin house in Coral Gables. My clothes are still damp with sweat and harbor water. I probably smell like vomit. Good. Let them see me exactly as I am. Destroyed.
Their garden blooms despite the heat, Mrs. Lin's careful tending evident in every perfect flower. The same house Meiling would drag me to for dinner, back when we were fourteen and invincible. Back when I didn't know I was days away from destroying everything.
Adrian kept the truth from them.
I won't be another link in that chain of lies.
My knuckles rap against their door. Three sharp knocks that echo in the morning quiet. My hand shakes so badly I have to clench it into a fist. Inside, footsteps approach. Slow, measured. The chain slides back with a sound like bones breaking.
The door begins to open, and I see Mr. Lin's face appearing in the gap. His eyes are tired, older, carved hollow.
Behind him, the hallway I remember. Family photos lining the walls. Meiling at ten, gap-toothed and grinning. Twelve, in her school uniform. Thirteen, at the beach. Fourteen, scowling at the camera.
Never older.
The door swings wider. Mr. Lin's eyes widen in recognition. Not just of me, but of something in my face. The answer he's been seeking. His mouth opens, but before he can speak, I'm already forming the words that have been locked in my throat for fourteen years.
I'm about to confess to what Adrian says I did. What must be true because the knife was there and the blood was real and she died while I lived.
But even as I prepare to speak, something whispers in the back of my mind: What if Adrian lied about this too?
The thought disappears as Mr. Lin steps back, making space for me to enter.
"Isadora," he says. “Finally.”