The royal palms my mother planted still line the driveway, reaching toward the afternoon sky like sentinels. Every time I drive through them, I’m six years old in the backseat, her finger pointing out the window: “I planted those for you, mija. So you’d always have something tall to look up to.”
Today they feel like witnesses to what I'm about to do.
The estate looks different without Cesar's black sedan claiming its usual spot in the circular driveway, positioned just ahead of everyone else's car like a territorial marker. For the first time in months, maybe years, that space sits empty. The absence feels louder than his presence ever did.
I pause at the entrance, Nico beside me, and Gabriel pulls up behind us in a rental car. My brother in his collar, carrying God like armor against what we've done. Years of distance between us, but here we are, telling our father the truth together. Finally together.
"Ready?" Nico's voice is low, just for me.
I'm not. I'll never be ready for this. But I'm done waiting for readiness before I act.
"Let's go," I say.
The staff greet us differently. The nervous deference from my last visit has evaporated, replaced by confusion. The housekeeper's eyes dart past me, searching for the man who's been giving orders in this house for months. Cesar hasn't been here since yesterday. His phone goes unanswered. The house that ran on his commands is operating without a conductor.
The nurse meets us outside Papa's door, surprise flickering across her face at seeing all three of us together. Me, Gabriel in his collar, the large quiet man she doesn't recognize. She glances around as if expecting someone else.
"He's lucid today," she says, still looking past us. "Better than he's been in a week. Mr.Vega usually…"
"We need the room," I cut her off. "He's my father. This is still his house, not Cesar's. Give us privacy."
She hesitates, used to checking with Cesar before allowing anything. Nico shifts when she pauses, his body angling between us and the door. Always ready. Always watching.
"Please," I add, softer but firm.
The nurse leaves, and I stop outside the door, needing a moment. Gabriel beside me, quieter than usual since the warehouse. His collar seems tighter today. Or maybe I'm just seeing him more clearly.
"We tell him together?" I ask.
Gabriel nods. "Together."
I look at Nico. He positions himself to the side, present but not central. Understanding the geometry of family business.
"I'll be here," he says simply, the promise underneath carrying everything.
I touch his hand briefly. The contact sends heat straight through me, inappropriate for this moment but undeniable. My body still remembers him, aches for what's coming after this. A charge passes between us. Then I open the door.
Papa is propped up in bed, thinner than last time. The disease is eating faster now, hollowing him from the inside. But his eyes snap to us when we enter, sharp, assessing, missing nothing.
He sees me first, then Gabriel. Surprise flickers across his face at seeing us together. We haven't been in the same room with him in years.
Then he sees Nico in the doorway. The soldier. The Rosetti. Papa's eyes find Nico, and I see him recognize what those hands have done. The blood has washed off but the violence is still there, written in the set of his shoulders. I can still smell gun oil on him beneath the soap. It makes me wet, knowing what he did for me, knowing he'd do it again.
Then Papa looks for the person who isn't there.
"Where's Cesar?"
The question I've been dreading. I sit in the chair beside his bed, the same one where I promised to listen to Cesar just days ago.
"That's what we need to talk about, Papa."
I start with what can be proven. The evidence laid out like a case file: the media campaign first, the financial connections between Cesar's people and the outlets that ran the embezzlement stories. The timeline with every leak corresponding to information only the inner circle knew.
Gabriel adds his pieces. Things Cesar said over the years, assuming priestly discretion. Financial structures. Names. The slow architecture of betrayal.
Papa's hands grip the sheets tighter with each revelation, but his face stays unreadable. I catch Nico's slight tension when Papa's breathing changes. He's never seen the king vulnerable either.
I continue, harder now. The body in La Sirena. The Zayas daughter, Lucia. I use her name, the name Nico learned and gave back to her, placed deliberately in the Calypso Room.
