Chapter 26 - Nico
“You taught me how.”
The words play on repeat, an audio file my brain won't delete. Her voice, flat and professional, sounds too much like someone else's. Sofia's voice, a lifetime ago: "You made me into this. You taught me to be hard, to be a weapon. Are you proud of what I became?"
Different women. Same cadence. Same accusation. Same architect.
Making coffee. Her terrible coffee that tastes sweet and milky like runny custard, but I'd drink gallons of it if it meant things were normal between us.
I shower cold, dress in black, open the guest room door like I'm breaching enemy territory.
She's at the kitchen island. Laptop open.
Coffee steaming. The kitchen still smells like her: vanilla and that coconut lotion she uses.
It's soaked into everything. Into me. She's wearing my t-shirt, the one she stole days ago when she still called me Horse Man and made jokes about my tactical everything, and nothing else beneath it.
I can tell by the way it clings. My cock stirs despite everything, and I hate myself for the want that won't die even as I kill everything else.
The sight makes my chest tight.
She looks up. Searches my face for something. The man who held her through nightmares, who kissed her on a rooftop, who came apart inside her whispering her name.
I give her the soldier instead.
"Morning."
"Morning." The word lands flat, professional, exactly like I deserve.
Her chin lifts. That micro-movement I've noted a hundred times: the Marisol Delgado tell for I'm hurt but I'd rather die than show it.
The distance between us: twelve feet. Could cross it in 0.7 seconds. Could have her in my arms before her next heartbeat. Instead, I maintain position. Hold the perimeter I've established around my own cowardice.
We exist in the same room, miles apart.
My phone buzzes with an incoming call. Gunner, which at this hour means trouble.
"The victim has been identified,” he says, his voice as deep as the ocean.
I wait impatiently, but he doesn’t offer any more. “And?”
“Lucia Zayas. Daughter of the Zayas family.”
The Zayas family are the vultures circling the dying corpse of Marisol’s father. The rival family that would destroy anyone or anything to get their hands on the Delgado empire. A family as brutal and close-knit as my own. And now they think Marisol killed one of their own?
“Fuck!”
The word is out of my mouth before I can stop it, and Marisol looks up sharply. I step onto the balcony for privacy, but through the glass I can still see her at the island, shoulders rigid, watching me.
"The Zayas family has made contact. Their daughter is dead," Gunner continues. "Found in Delgado property. They want answers. Not from the police. From the family. From Marisol."
The implication is clear: if satisfactory answers aren't provided, the Zayas will extract their own justice. Miami doesn't settle blood debts in courtrooms.
"We've spotted their muscle near La Sirena, near the estate, near your building."
Cesar has manufactured more than just a legal frame-up; he’s manufactured a war. The Zayas don't know the truth about their daughter. They think Marisol did it. And they're coming.
In Chicago, I'd already be mobilizing for war. But here I'm paralyzed, fighting the wrong battle while real threats circle.
"Copy," I say, already running threat assessments. "I need resources."
The next two hours are logistics. Coordinating with Marco, who authorizes whatever I need: additional security, intel on Zayas movements, legal pressure if necessary. I spend the time on tactical planning: reviewing building security, mapping approach vectors, preparing for every scenario.
It feels good. Clean. This is what I know. Threats and solutions that involve firepower and positioning, not vulnerability and tenderness.
Stepping back from her isn't withdrawal. It's discipline.
She tries three times over the course of the morning to bridge the distance I've built.
First attempt: She brings me coffee. Sets it beside my laptop where I'm reviewing security footage.
Her wrist brushes mine, that same wrist I licked three nights ago while she gasped my name, and my body betrays me with want even as I pull away.
Our fingers almost touch when I reach for the handle.
I move my hand away like the near-contact burns.
"Thank you." The word has never sounded so much like "don't."
Her jaw tightens, but she retreats to her side of the kitchen without comment.
Second attempt: "What's happening with the calls? The Zayas?"
I told her the victim was Lucia Zayas, and she wants to be part of the strategy to fix this mess. She's sharp, tactical, the version of herself that emerged last night when she stopped being the party girl and became something harder.
I give her bare facts. No analysis, no speculation, no collaboration. Just the briefing I'd give any client.
"The Zayas family believes you're responsible for their daughter's death. They're mobilizing resources. I'm coordinating countermeasures."
She absorbs it, asks smart follow-up questions I don't fully answer. Every word between us is professional, cold, exactly what I'm forcing it to be.
Third attempt: She stretches, my t-shirt riding up to reveal the bruises I left on her hips three nights ago. My marks. My claim. Still visible while I pretend I have no right to them. Then she stands directly in my path to the balcony, blocking the door with her body. Forces eye contact.
"Are we going to talk about last night?"
"There's nothing to talk about."
"You slept in the guest room."
"The tactical situation requires…"
"Don't." The first flash of the real Marisol. Heat. Defiance. Life. "Don't use tactics as an excuse. You looked at me like I was a stranger and walked away. I want to know why."
I meet her eyes. Hold them. The answer is right there: Because you sounded like Sofia. Because I watched your light go out and recognized my fingerprints on the switch. Because I turn bright things dark.
"The Zayas threat changes the operational parameters," I say instead. "I need to maintain professional focus."
She stares at me, reading the lie, deciding whether to call it.
She doesn't. Just nods, steps aside, goes back to her laptop. Something in me screams at the easy surrender, at how quickly she's learned not to fight for things that matter.
Every cell in my body screams to go to her. My feet actually move, one step toward her before I lock them down. The soldier wins. The man howls.
I walk to the balcony. Shut the door. Breathe Miami heat while something cold settles in my chest.
The memory comes uninvited on the balcony, the same one that's haunted me for months now, made fresh by seeing its echo in Marisol.
Sofia, six months before she left. Training session at the compound. She could disarm men twice her size, read a room like I could, kill without hesitation. I was proud. I didn't see what it was costing her.
Three months before she left: I found her in the compound kitchen at 2 AM. Sitting in the dark.
"Do you ever wonder who I'd be if you hadn't trained me?" Her eyes had gone flat, the same tactical blankness I trained into her. "I used to design dresses. Did you know that? Before you started training me. I used to draw gowns. Beautiful ones. I was good."
I didn't know.
"When's the last time you played piano, Nico?"
I couldn't remember.
"That's what this family does,” she told me. “Takes the soft parts and cuts them out. And we let it happen because we think hard means safe."
Not long after that, she left. And I started counting days. I've replayed these conversations a thousand times, but seeing Marisol transform the same way makes them fresh wounds again.
I come back to the present. Through the glass, I can see Marisol at the kitchen island. Working. Calm. Efficient. The chaotic imp extinct, replaced by something strategic and cold.
Yesterday she was sunshine. Ridiculous nicknames and laughter that hid wounds. Alive in a way I'd forgotten people could be.
Now she's me.
She learned by watching. Absorbed how I operate: the control, the compartmentalization, the way I put feeling in a box and run on calculation. When everything fell apart, she reached for the only survival tool she'd seen work: mine.
Sofia did ballet. Now she doesn't.
Marisol was a wild sunshower. Now she isn't.
The common denominator is me. My proximity destroys soft things. I don't soften. I erode. I teach people to survive by teaching them to stop feeling.
My phone rings. Marco.
The business conversation is brief: resources deployed, intel incoming. Then: "What's happening with the girl?"
"She's a principal under protection."
"Nico." Patient in the way that means he won't ask again. "What's happening."
The silence answers for me.
"Don't do what I think you're doing."
"The tactical situation…"
"She isn't Sofia," Marco says, cutting through my excuse. "She's turning into a woman in crisis who's coping the only way she can. That's not the same thing. And if you pull away because you're scared, you're not protecting her. You're confirming every fear she has. You're wrong about this."
He hangs up. Marco's never wrong about people. But knowing and doing are different wars, and I'm losing both.
I go back inside and double down on the distance anyway.
By evening, the tension between us has become a physical weight pressing on everything.
My skin feels too tight, like withdrawal from a drug. Days of having her against me every night, and now the empty space beside me has weight, presence, accusation.
She's been working all day. Hasn't broken character once. The tactical operator persona holds steady. But I catch moments: the way she glances at our bedroom door, the way she makes two cups of coffee out of habit then stares at the second one like she's forgotten why.