29 - Isa
Leonardo Rosetti stands over Adrian, blood on his knuckles, Adrian wiping blood from his mouth where he’s been struck.
I take it in with one sweep. Adrian still standing but bloodied, nose streaming red, blood on his lips from Leonardo's punch, this stranger with his fists still clenched. My knife finds his throat before my next heartbeat.
"Touch him again and I'll paint this marble with your blood." I press the blade deeper, feeling his pulse jump against the steel. "I've already killed twice tonight. A third won't even make me blink."
I don't care who this man is. Don’t care about the Rosetti name. He hurt Adrian, and that's all the information I need.
Adrian makes a sound, maybe my name, but I don't look away from the threat.
All those years of Adrian protecting me, killing for me, watching over me.
Now I'm the one with the blade out, protecting him.
Even bloodied, even struck, he looks like a wounded king.
Blood traces from his nose like war paint.
When he touches his jaw where Leonardo hit him, his shirt pulls tight across his chest, and Christ, my body still responds to him. Still wants him.
The man under my knife has wild dark-red hair, expensive suit that screams New York money, and the kind of restless energy that makes him vibrate even with steel at his throat.
His eyes track to my hands. To the blood still wet and dripping from my fingers, not his, not Adrian's, but the Lins' painting my skin like I've been finger-painting in arterial spray.
"The bartender has fangs," he says, talking with my knife drawing blood from his neck.
"I'm the woman about to end you." I shift my grip, angling for better leverage.
My hand steadies on the knife. One pull, one arc, and this man becomes meat.
The thought doesn't disturb me. It sings through my blood like the Lins' deaths did.
I've already crossed that line. What's one more body? "Give me one reason not to."
The stranger's lips twitch, not quite a smile. "Because my wife would be upset, and she's had a bad enough week already."
"Isa, stop." Nico's voice cuts through the frozen standoff, and suddenly he's there, stepping into the chaos with his hands visible, unthreatening. The smell of his cinnamon gum mixes with expensive cologne and blood. "That's my cousin. Hurt him and you’ll never stop paying for it."
The threat lands but doesn't change anything.
My blade holds steady at Leonardo's throat while Nico keeps talking, explaining in that careful military tone he uses when situations need defusing.
The entire room stays frozen, nobody daring to move while I hold New York power at knifepoint.
In the corner, Gunner's hand rests on his gun.
Logan watches with those calculating eyes, measuring the fallout.
"I don't care who he is." The words come out sharp as the blade. "He doesn't touch what's mine."
The claim escapes before I can stop it, but I don't take it back. Even with everything broken between us, Adrian is still mine to protect.
Leonardo's eyebrows rise slightly. "What's yours?"
"Yes." The word comes out flat, final. Behind him, Eleanor watches with those ice-blue eyes that could freeze hell over, waiting to see if I'll actually open her husband's throat.
The La Sirena family has gathered in a careful semicircle, the standoff frozen in place, nobody moving, everybody calculating odds and consequences.
The air thrums with violence about to happen.
My hand is so tight on the knife that the hilt bites into my palm. Leonardo's pulse flickers against the blade. If he moves, if I even think he’s going for Adrian again, I’ll open him up.
Leonardo isn’t struggling. Instead, he just studies me, eyes flat and clinical, and I get the uncanny sense he’s measuring my rage, noting every twitch in my jaw as if he’s deciding if I’m worth the trouble.
Nico speaks again, shifting his weight, but keeping himself in my line of sight, palms open, a peace offering. "The standoff needs to end. We're all on the same side here."
I want to believe that. But I don’t. Not with the way Leonardo tried to take me with him. The way he looked at Adrian. Not with the way Adrian grits his teeth, one eye swelling. I want to tell Nico to fuck off and let me do what needs to be done
"Are we?" My blade doesn't waver. "Because from where I'm standing, your cousin just assaulted…"
I stop. I can’t say it. ‘My lover’ sounds like a joke now. ‘My protector’ is a fairytale. I settle on nothing, the sentence trailing off, and hope the knife speaks for me. Maybe it does, because Leonardo’s lips twitch up, just a tick, like he finds me amusing.
The tension is about to snap. I can feel it coming.
And then the door explodes open, ripping all that tension to shreds.
"Jesus Christ, does nobody in this city answer their fucking phone?"
The voice is impossible and unmistakable, and for a split-second I’m sure I’ve finally snapped, that the stress and the killing and the blood have short-circuited my brain and conjured a ghost. But it’s real, and Juliet is in the flesh, standing in the doorway, barefoot.
She’s soaked. Not just wet—drenched, as if she fell into the bay and swam here.
In her clothes. The water makes her platinum hair stringy and darker, stuck to her skull like wet paint.
Her makeup is a mess, mascara in blue streaks down her cheeks, lipstick smeared and washed out.
Harbor water drips from her, the salt-rot smell cutting through La Sirena's perfumed air.
Juliet takes in the scene. A knife at Leonardo's throat, Adrian bleeding, Eleanor frozen mid-step toward her. She clocks me last, holding the knife to her brother-in-law’s neck, and her smile—the wild, maniacal, fearless one—spreads across her face in a way that makes me want to collapse and laugh and sob all at once.
And she laughs. Actually laughs.
"Well, this is dramatic even for Miami." She pushes wet hair out of her face, leaving trails of water down her cheeks. "Could somebody maybe not murder anybody for five seconds and explain to me what’s going on?"
Her words break the room’s spell. A dozen things happen at once: Gunner’s hand drops off his gun, Logan exhales, Eleanor’s shoulders unclench, Leonardo’s tension melts, and Nico glances at me, waiting to see what I’ll do next.
The entire universe narrows to the space between Juliet’s soaked clothes and the knife I’m still pressing to Leonardo’s neck.
A wet, surprised laugh erupts from somewhere in me. The pressure that’s held me together all night snaps. My knife drops from Leonardo's throat. Not a conscious decision, just my hand going slack as the guilt that's been crushing me since the marina dissolves like sugar in rain.
She's alive. Not floating in the harbor, not tortured by Santiago, not dead because of my drunken advice. Alive and dripping harbor water on La Sirena's floors.
Eleanor lets out a whimper and suddenly she's moving, crossing to her sister in three quick strides. "Juliet, we thought… when Isa called and said…" Her voice breaks.
“Isa told you about Santiago?”
Juliet accepts her sister's embrace, though she grimaces at getting Eleanor's perfect suit wet.
"I took a boat out there to confront him, yeah.
Paid some sketchy captain to take me to that psycho's island.
But when I saw it, when I saw the actual compound and realized what I was about to do, I lost my nerve. "
She pulls back from Eleanor, addressing the room now. “I was standing on the sand around the back of the island, freaking out, but when I turned around, the captain had already left. He got out of there as fast as he could. Guess he figured it wasn’t safe, probably thought I was insane.”
“So what did you do next?” Eleanor asks.
Juliet shrugs. “I stood around for a while on the sand, looking like an idiot. Or like Santiago’s next target, more likely.
Then I decided to look for a canoe or something, to see if I could row home.
By the time night fell, I hadn't found anything, so I just holed up in a small shed and waited until morning.
Groundskeeper's shed, I guess — and thank God, because there was bottled water in there, a box of protein bars, even a blanket folded on the shelf.
Lucky. Or I'm smarter than I look. Anyway, it's the only reason I'm standing here instead of dead of dehydration in a psychopath's toolshed.”
“Jesus,” somebody whispers.
“I kind of hoped the captain would come back and rescue me, so I waited around another full day before I realized that wasn’t going to happen.
I'll skip the part where I spent two days psyching myself up to actually walk up there and knock on his door.
Spoiler: I didn't. Turns out I'm exactly as brave as everyone thinks I am. Anyway, I eventually figured I had to swim.” She gestures at her soaked clothes.
"Three miles in designer jeans. Do not recommend.
Also I left four-hundred-dollar sandals sitting on that lunatic's beach, so technically Santiago Zayas owes me shoes. "
Sera appears at Juliet’s side and presses an empanada and a tall glass of water into her hands.
“Oh, Sera, thank you,” Juliet says, collapsing onto a barstool while Eleanor helps to keep her upright.
"Your bag was floating." My voice comes out rough. "I found your bag in the harbor."
"Yeah, I dropped that overboard on day one." She wrings water from her shirt, and her tone turns serious. "Some confrontation, hey? I wanted to be a big shot but ended up a coward, as usual."
"You're not a coward." The words tear from my throat as I cross to her, pulling her from Eleanor’s arms into mine. She's cold and wet and shaking, but alive, and I hold her tight enough that she gasps. The friendship we built, unlikely and real, solid under my hands.
"I'm sorry," I whisper against her wet hair. "I never should have told you to confront him."