Chapter 32 - Wren
The sound reaches us before the door does — voices, laughter, the clink of glasses, and underneath all of it the smell of frying garlic and onions, the warmth of a kitchen that’s been working for hours.
Logan’s hand is at my lower back as we cross the main floor of La Sirena, dark and closed tonight, chairs down but the stage unlit.
The door to the private dining room is half-open.
I stop just before it.
My nerves surface without asking — the quiet kind that have nothing to do with fear and everything to do with wanting something to go right.
Isa will be there. Isa has been cold to me since the beginning, and nothing I've done in weeks has moved that needle.
I've been Logan's arrangement, then Logan's guest, then Logan's whatever-this-is, and Isa has looked through all of it with those dark eyes and given me nothing.
He notices. Of course he does. He turns and looks at me, not with patience exactly, more like a man who has already done his accounting and reached a conclusion.
"She'll be there," I say.
"Yes."
"And she'll still be cold."
He looks at me for a moment. Something moves in his face — not reassurance, which would be wrong, but recognition. A woman who has earned her way into a room that doesn't open easily, and he knows what that costs. "Possibly." His hand presses at my back. "Come on."
We step through together, his hand warm and certain.
The room is long, low-lit, candled. A table running most of its length, mismatched chairs that have accumulated over years of no one caring about the chairs.
Sera has covered every inch of the surface with food, platters and bowls and serving dishes stacked everywhere.
It makes my chest ache a little, the way generosity sometimes does when you've been a long time without it.
Gabriel sees us first. He rises and crosses the room, unhurried, already moving before anyone else has registered us.
He stops in front of me. Not past me to Logan. In front of me.
"Wren," he says. "I'm glad you stayed."
He means all of it — stayed in Miami, stayed after the Gilded Lily, stayed yesterday morning when I could have been on a bus. He says it like he’s offering absolution.
"Thank you," I say.
He nods once. Then he turns to Logan, and something passes between them — a hand on the shoulder, words exchanged too quietly to catch. Gabriel returns to his seat.
Logan leans down toward my ear. "He's not generous with praise."
"I know."
"You earned it." A pause. "So did I, apparently. You've made me insufferably sentimental."
I look at the room.
Sera is at the far end, moving between the kitchen door and the table with one more dish.
Gabriel has resumed his seat beside her, his hand finding her hip as she passes — brief, possessive, the touch of a man who still can't quite believe he gets to.
. Marisol is halfway through something she's explaining to Nico with both hands; he listens with his elbow on the table, watching her with an expression he would deny to anyone who named it.
The sparkling water in front of her is going flat. She doesn't notice.
Adrian is at the table's head, pouring wine for anyone within reach. The Siren sits near the middle, hands folded in her lap, eyes slightly distant. Juliet is beside her, turned inward, plate untouched.
Gunner is facing the exit, watching the door as he always does. And Isa is standing at the side table sorting through bottles of wine. She doesn’t look up when we enter.
I take the seat Logan holds out and sit down.
Sera stops beside me on her way back from the kitchen.
She doesn't say anything. She sets a plate down in front of me — ropa vieja, plantains, rice and black beans ladled separately — and for a moment her hand rests on the edge of the plate.
When I look up, her eyes are on mine. Warm, steady, a woman who decided something a while ago and is only now making it visible.
Then she moves on, taking her seat beside Gabriel.
I pick up my fork. The ropa vieja is extraordinary — deep and slow, the beef giving way easily, the tomatoes and peppers cooked down to something almost sweet. It feels like she cooked this just for me.
Across the table, Gabriel murmurs something to Sera about Gunner being on his third helping. Sera glances that direction with quiet amusement. Gabriel's mouth curves.
Gunner doesn't look up from the food.
"You look different," Adrian says.
He's looking at me, leaning back in his chair with his wine glass, easy and unhurried.
"Different how?"
"You walked in like you were walking in." He tilts his head. "Before, you always had one eye on the door."
"I knew where the exits were. I'm an artist. I observe things."
He smiles. "Logan's different too. You should see him these days. He came to the morning briefing yesterday and made a joke." A pause for effect. "On purpose."
"Was it funny?"
"No. That's how I knew it was real." He raises his glass slightly. "Mi reina, whatever you did to him, keep doing it."
I laugh — surprised out of me, the way the best laughs always are.
Logan's arm finds the back of my chair without comment. He's caught the tail end of it, and when I turn he's watching me with nothing controlled in his expression, the warmth sitting right on the surface.
"You made a joke at a briefing yesterday," I accuse.
"Adrian told you."
"Adrian tells everyone everything."
The corner of his mouth moves. "I'll address that at the next briefing."
"He says you weren't funny," I tell him.
"Adrian has no taste."
"Adrian has impeccable taste," Adrian says, not looking up from his wine.
Logan's arm settles more firmly. His thumb moves once against my shoulder — brief, certain.
The table has its own grammar and I'm learning to read it: who interrupts whom, who finishes sentences, the rhythm of people who have eaten together enough times to stop thinking about it.
I'm learning it. And still, across the room, Isa remains at the bar, back turned, a wall I haven't found a door in yet.
The Siren has barely touched her food. Same portion Sera set down — growing cool, untouched. Her hands are still in her lap and she's humming under her breath, barely audible, more vibration than music. I excuse myself and carry my wine around the table to where she sits.
She looks up when I sit down beside her.
"You're quiet tonight," I say.
"I'm always quiet."
"It seems different tonight."
A small beat. Her eyes drop to her hands — those long, elegant hands that hold a whole room when they move. "It's been loud in here since the Gilded Lily." She touches her own temple. "I keep hearing it."
"It will get better," I say. "At least that’s what everyone keeps telling me."
She looks at me. Her face opens slightly — not relief, but the recognition of someone told an honest thing instead of a comfortable one. "So, are you sticking around?" she asks.
I grin. “Yep."
"I've never known how to leave," she says plainly. "I stay because I don't know how not to."
I hear the weight in that and don't push on it. I just sit with her for a moment, our shoulders close, the candle burning low between us.
Juliet is beside her, and she is worse off.
Her hands are twisted together in her lap, fingers working over each other. I reach over and cover them with mine.
She looks up.
"I keep seeing that Santiago creep," she says. Her voice is very small. "He said he'd remember me and I can't stop feeling like he will. Like he’s already mapped out my future."
"He doesn't have that power," I say. "It’s just words. That's all he has."
"It didn't feel like just words."
I keep my hand over hers. Her hands stay still in my grip — not relaxed, just held. She looks toward the door once, briefly, then back at the table. Not better. Just not alone in it.
I return to my seat. Logan catches my eye — a brief question from a man who has been watching me while pretending to listen to Nico.
"She’s okay," I say quietly.
He nods once. His hand moves to my knee under the table, warm and steady, staying there while the conversation shifts.
Marisol is at Gabriel's ear, the siblings folded toward each other. I catch fragments — Jorge's name, twice. Then Marisol's voice, lower than I've heard it tonight: "— and I keep waiting to feel sadder than I feel. Is that bad?"
Gabriel doesn't answer right away. His eyes close briefly.
"No," he says. "It's just accurate."
She huffs — small, wet, the closest thing to a laugh. "He'd hate that we're being this honest about him."
"He hated everything." A pause. "Except money."
She leans into him. His arm comes around her.
I think about grief traveling in different shapes through different bodies.
I think about sitting beside my mother while she shivered in a room that was seventy-two degrees, checking the thermostat again because the number had to eventually make sense.
I think about all the years since and how I came to Miami looking for fear and found this instead.
A table full of people who have held enormous losses and still make room for others.
Marisol tilts her head back slightly. Not crying, but close. Gabriel's arm comes around her.
What they have, I didn't have. A person who knew the same person you're missing, present in the same room. I missed my mother alone because my father couldn't stay and there was no one else. I don't let the thought turn into self-pity — just acknowledge it then set it down.
Logan's hand tightens on my knee once. He didn't see what I was watching, but he felt the shift in me. He does that — registers the small tremors before I've named them.
I put my hand over his.
Nico sets down his fork. The table quiets.
"Héctor is regrouping," he says. "Ramón is recruiting from crews we thought were loyal — three of them in the past two weeks. The money is moving." He looks at Logan. "Santiago's quiet."
"That's worse than noise," Logan says.