Now I watch him at the island. Gun disassembled, cleaned, reassembled with mechanical precision. His hands steady. His face calm. Not angry. Something past anger. The cold focus of a man who's moved through rage into the still place on the other side. The morning light catches the muscles in his forearms as he works, and even now, even with violence on today's agenda, my body responds to him. My throat thickens, remembering those hands on me last night, grounding me, claiming me, reminding me I'm alive.
I heard him in the shower earlier. The same shower where he used to lock himself away from me. The door was open. An invitation I wasn't ready to accept, not with today's violence ahead. But tonight, after justice is served, I'll make him remember why he stopped hiding from me.
"When will you do it?" I ask.
"Today."
"I'm coming."
He looks up. I expect argument. Resistance. The protective instinct that wants to shield me from what's about to happen.
He studies my face for a long moment. Reading whatever he finds there.
"Okay."
No argument. No protection. He's done deciding what I can handle.
A knock at the door breaks the quiet. Three sharp raps. Controlled, deliberate. I know before I open it.
Gabriel stands in my doorway. My brother looks like he wrestled with God all night and lost. The collar sits on him like a costume now. Father Gabriel, patron saint of terrible life choices and even worse timing. His eyes are darker than I remember, the composure cracked. Like a man who spent the night on his knees praying and found no comfort in it.
He sees me. The scrapes, the bruises, the exhaustion written in my face. For one moment the mask falls completely.
"Mari."
My name in his mouth the way it sounded when we were children. Before the Calypso Room. Before God became a hiding place.
I let him in. Don't hug him. Not yet. The eight years still exist even in crisis.
Gabriel's eyes find the gun on the counter, then Nico's face. "You're going to kill him."
Not a question. Not judgment. An observation from a man who understands violence better than a priest should.
"Yes," Nico says simply.
Gabriel nods, something shifting in his expression that I can't quite name. "I need to be there."
He sits with us. Coffee he doesn't drink. Hands folded on the table. "Over the years, Cesar talked to me. Not confession. He's not Catholic. But the way powerful men talk to priests. Assuming the collar means silence."
Gabriel pulls out a folded paper. "Last night, I wrote down everything. Dates. Names. Financial structures he mentioned."
I read it. Nico reads over my shoulder, his body heat radiating against my back, making me hyperaware of his proximity even as we focus on evidence. Thirty years of patient architecture mapped out in my brother's careful handwriting.
"He kept us apart," I say. "That was deliberate."
Gabriel nods, jaw tight. "I thought I was protecting you by staying away. He convinced me of it."
My anger toward my brother shifts. Doesn't disappear, but reshapes. We were both manipulated.
"Can you live with this?" I ask. "Watching a man die?"
"I've lived with worse. We both have."
The warehouse sits in Miami's industrial district. Concrete and rust, the glamour stripped away to show the city's working bones. The smell hits first: salt air mixing with motor oil. Gunner waits outside, massive and expressionless, all scars and tattoos. He sees me and does something unprecedented. Touches my shoulder. Brief, careful. His version of "I'm glad you're alive."
"Little shark," he says, using the childhood nickname.
I almost cry but manage not to.
