I don’t sit. “I made a choice.”
He sets the paper down, eyes meeting mine for the first time. “You’ve been making a lot of choices lately.”
I shrug one shoulder. “Maybe I’m tired of being your blunt instrument.”
He leans back, spreading his hands slightly. “You don’t get tired. That’s why I keep you. That’s why they’re scared of you. Because you don’t hesitate. Because you don’t think. You just end things.”
“Maybe I started thinking.”
He tilts his head. “That shrink of yours, you’ve been getting sweet on her?”
I stare at him without blinking. “She’s not mine.”
“She’s an outsider,” he says. “And outsiders are only useful until they’re liabilities. Right now, she’s a liability.”
My jaw tightens. “She’s not part of this.”
He smiles faintly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Everything’s part of this. Especially when you start making noise, when you start letting witnesses run, when you start going soft. People notice. People talk. And when they talk, I have to show them I still control the room.”
I take a step closer to the desk. “Say what you’re saying.”
He doesn’t flinch. “Next time, we take her. Bring her in. Make her disappear. If you want her breathing, you’ll start following orders again.”
The silence between us goes sharp enough to cut. My hands curl at my sides. My breath stays even, but only because I’ve practiced for years.
“You so much as touch her?—”
“You’ll do what?” he interrupts, still calm. “Kill me? You won’t. Because you know what happens next. Without me, this whole operation collapses. And you, Calderon, don’t survive without the ring. You’re just a fighter with nowhere to go. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re a free man.”
I lean forward until my shadow swallows his desk. “Try me.”
He doesn’t blink. “Orders stand.”
I walk out before I break his neck.
The hallway outside feels narrower than usual. The men glance up as I pass, then look away quickly. They’ve heard something. They always do. Pilar watches me from her post, but she doesn’t say a word. Not yet.
I keep moving. Out the side door, into the heat already rising from the pavement even though it’s barely eight a.m. The sky above Seville is pale, washed-out blue, the kind that promises it’ll burn hotter later. My head is full of Kaleigh’s voice, soft and steady, telling me control isn’t strength, it’s armor.
I start walking without knowing where I’m going. My hands are still trembling. Not from fear. From holding everything in. From knowing the bull is right there under my skin, ready to tear through flesh and concrete just to get to her before they do.
I don’t stop walking until I’m standing in front of her building again. Same window. Same curtain drawn slightly aside. My heart is still a steady hammer, but now it’s carrying something else with it. A decision forming.
Mateo thinks he still controls the room.
He doesn’t. Not anymore.
10
KALEIGH
The first sign that something is wrong is the silence outside my door. Normally, the street hums all night with mopeds rattling over cobblestones, vendors closing up, couples arguing softly in doorways, and that constant ripple of the city breathing. Tonight it’s just… quiet. The kind of quiet you feel at the base of your skull before a thunderstorm.
I’m at my desk, glasses perched low on my nose, reading through notes on dissociative states in combat veterans when the knock comes. It’s soft at first, polite even, like a neighbor might knock if they were returning a package. I set the pen down, cross the room, and press my palm against the wood, peering through the peephole.
It’s Pilar.
Her makeup is perfect as always, hair pulled back, leather jacket zipped up. But her smile isn’t there. She’s staring at the door instead of the peephole, her hands behind her back like she’s trying to keep them still.
