32 - Isa
The marble floor of Roth & Associates reflects our footsteps like water, cold and perfect. I clutch the manila folder against my chest. Each paper inside burns. I killed them, and now I’m giving away everything they owned like that could somehow balance the scales.
"You don't need to come," I say for the third time since Marisol and Nico appeared at my apartment door this morning after Adrian had gone for coffees, their presence making my skin prickle with remembered accusations. "I can handle this alone."
"Of course you can," Marisol says, her honey eyes bright. "But we're coming anyway. Consider it moral support. Or immoral support. Whatever you need."
Nico says nothing, just follows with that military precision that makes every movement deliberate.
His hand rests near his hip, old habit from a man who's killed more people than this lawyer has clients.
The way he positioned himself between me and the street when we walked here, the way he checked the exits when we entered.
Protection I didn't ask for from people who called me a liability just days ago.
Adrian would have insisted on coming, would have stood behind me with that possessive hand on my lower back, his cologne making it hard to think straight.
But I'd told him I needed to do this alone, and for once, after everything we've been through, after all his promises to never let me go, he'd given me this space.
Not easily, not without that jaw-clenching resistance I know so well, but he'd done it.
His absence feels wrong, like a missing tooth my tongue keeps finding.
The lawyer's office looms ahead, all glass and chrome and the kind of quiet that money buys.
Two men in expensive suits wait in the lobby when we arrive.
Not lawyers, not clients. The kind of men who make the receptionist's hand hover near the panic button.
Nico's subtle head shake makes them settle back.
His men. Still protecting me even after everything.
"Mr. Roth will see you shortly," the receptionist says, her calm the kind that comes from seeing worse than us pass through these doors.
I want them gone. This is the most private thing I've ever done, routing the estate of the people I killed into something that might mean something.
Having witnesses feels unbearable, especially these witnesses who saw me walk in covered in the Lins' blood, who know exactly what kind of monster sits beneath my control.
"The appointment's in five minutes," I say, trying once more, my voice catching slightly. "You really don't need to—"
"We're staying," Nico cuts in, his voice carrying that edge that ends discussions.
The folder burns hotter in my hands. Inside, every document needed to route an unclaimed estate into charity. Blood money transformed into something else, though not redemption. I'm not stupid enough to think paperwork can buy that.
The waiting room smells like leather. The air conditioning is too cold, raising goosebumps on my arms, making me hyperaware of every inch of exposed skin. We sit in plush chairs, none of us looking at each other.
Marisol can't handle it. She never could handle silence.
"That painting looks like someone sneezed gold paint onto canvas," she says, gesturing at an abstract piece with forced brightness. "I bet they paid thirty grand for it. Thirty grand for a sneeze."
I give her nothing. Just stare at my hands, at the folder that holds everything I'm about to sign away. My fingers tremble slightly. I press them flat against my thighs.
"And these magazines," she continues, picking one up with manic energy.
"Who actually reads 'Yacht Quarterly'? 'Oh darling, I simply must know the latest in yacht trends.
' Like boats change seasonally. 'Darling, is that last year's yacht?
How gauche. Everyone knows this season is all about aggressive bowsprits and judgmental portholes. '"
Nico shifts slightly in his chair, the leather creaking. That's all. Just a shift that says he's listening without engaging, seeking threats even here.
"The receptionist has definitely killed someone," Marisol stage-whispers, her voice climbing with desperation. "Look at her. That level of calm only comes from knowing where bodies are buried. Literally. She probably has a spreadsheet. 'Tuesday: hide corpse. Wednesday: dental appointment.'"
The jokes fall flat, hitting the floor like dropped glass.
Bodies. Killing. The words hang there, too close to what we all know.
The Lins in their living room, blood spreading across hardwood, the wet sound when I pulled my knife free.
The silence that follows isn't just quiet.
It's the sound of Marisol's deflection failing completely.
She opens her mouth to say something else, probably another joke, but nothing comes. The humor can't cover what sits between us anymore. Her calling me a bomb waiting to go off, Nico choosing his blood over us, all of it pressing down like the humidity waiting outside.
"Mr. Roth will see you now," the receptionist says, and we all stand too quickly, grateful for the escape.
The conference room has windows overlooking downtown Miami. Mr. Roth sits across the mahogany table, papers in a neat pile by his right hand. We're monsters pretending to be civilized, signing papers like blood doesn't still stain our hands.
"Mr. Rosetti has already handled the preliminary work," the lawyer says, and my eyes snap to Nico.
"A closed investigation and no surviving heirs simplify probate considerably," Mr. Roth adds, shuffling his neat pile.
"The court expedited administration. Frankly, I've never seen an estate of this size clear so quickly. "
Closed investigation. The words land in my stomach like stones dropped down a well.
I know exactly what closed it, and who. His fingerprints are nowhere on the file, the way they’ve been nowhere on anything, for fourteen years.
The official story is already public: grief finished what it started.
A husband, a knife, an anniversary. The neighbors are leaving flowers on the porch where I knelt and confessed.
Nico doesn't react, just maintains that steady posture. But I see it now. He found the lawyer, cleared the legal path, made it possible for an unclaimed estate to go where I want it instead of to the state. Did all of it before I asked. Before I even knew it was possible.
"The fund will be established in the name of Meiling Lin," Mr. Roth continues, and hearing her name in this sterile room makes my chest tighten. Makes it hard to breathe. "Providing futures for girls aged fourteen to eighteen. Full scholarships, living expenses, opportunities."
My fingers find the key tattoo on my wrist without thinking, pressing hard enough to feel the bone underneath.
The pen weighs nothing, but I feel the ghost of that tiny diary key Meiling wore.
The one that was supposed to unlock our futures.
Now her name will unlock futures for girls who'll never know how she died, who'll never know my hands were the ones that…
No. I can't finish that thought. Not here.
"Sign here," Mr. Roth says, sliding papers across.
My signature looks wrong, shaky, like someone else is holding the pen.
I sign. Every page, every line that gives away what I killed for.
Not one cent to me. My name appears nowhere except as the signatory.
It's Meiling's name that matters, Meiling's fund, Meiling's memory turned into something that might help someone somewhere.
The bitter joke of it sits in my chest like shattered glass. I'm founding a memorial for a girl I killed, using money from parents I also killed. The atonement is meaningless. But it's all I have to give.
Marisol and Nico witness the truth of what I'm doing.
Watch me sign away every cent of what that night cost, taking nothing for myself.
They came expecting paperwork. They're seeing who I really am, though I don't know what that looks like through their eyes.
Someone trying to balance books that will never balance.
Someone who killed for family and won't profit from it.
Roth leans back in his chair when the last page is signed.
“As per Mr. Rosetti’s instructions, we will invest the principal and use the interest to fund the scholarships.
I anticipate we will fund up to 25 housing and education scholarships per year on a rolling basis, so 125 girls aged 14-18 will be funded at any given time. ” He smiles benignly. “It’s done.”
Done. As if paperwork could ever make it done. As if scholarship funds could resurrect the dead or clean the blood from my hands. But it's the only thing left to do with what remains of them.
Mr. Roth collects his papers and leaves us there in the glass-walled conference room overlooking Biscayne, the Miami heat and light streaming in.
The echo of the door latch is still in the air when Nico speaks, his voice so soft it barely registers at first—a voice not meant for law offices or witnesses, a voice I’ve only ever heard in the prelude to violence or the aftermath of it.
"I was wrong."
The words freeze me, mid-motion, my hands flattened on the table as if bracing for a shockwave.
His eyes, so famously blank in the face of threat, now hold a flicker of something rawer, sharper, as if he’s been gutting himself quietly since last week.
My pulse kicks up, that old instinct to run before anyone gets too close.
"At La Sirena. When it mattered, I chose blood over the family standing in front of me.
" He doesn't look away, doesn't soften it, just states the failure like a military report.
"I sided with New York blood instead of the people I actually chose. They’re my family and always will be, and I will always be there for them.
But I made the wrong choice that day. I knew it the moment I did it. "