"Get dressed. We leave in ten minutes."
It's an order, not a request. Right now, with my world tilting sideways, I'm grateful for someone who knows how to take charge.
He reassembles his gun efficiently, checks the magazine, slides it into the holster at his hip. Even visiting my dying father requires being armed. The thought should disturb me. Instead, it makes me feel safer.
I change quickly, peeling off the massive sweater that's been scratching me like penance. It pools on the floor. I pull on something appropriate for visiting a dying father. A simple dark dress that hopefully says "dutiful daughter" instead of "hungover disappointment."
The woman in the mirror looks hollow. Dark circles under honey eyes. Skin too pale. Last night she was dancing on a yacht, grabbing her bodyguard's cock, trying to forget everything. Now she's about to watch her father die.
I think about my mother's death, how I was too young to disappoint her properly. At least she died thinking I might become something. My father gets the full show. Twenty-six years of spectacular failure. Eight years of self-destruction. Tabloid headlines and public embarrassments and a daughter who can't even stay sober long enough to visit him.
When I emerge, Nico's waiting by the door. He's added a jacket that conceals his weapon, but I know it's there. The knowledge comforts me when it shouldn't.
We take my car. Carlo has the morning off, so Nico drives while I sit in the passenger seat watching Miami stream past, trying not to think about how my father will look at me. How he always looks at me. Like evidence of his failures as a parent. Like the disaster that survived while the good one fled to God.
"Tell me about him. Your father."
I'm surprised he asked. "Jorge Delgado. Built an empire from nothing. Hospitality, real estate, other things no one talks about. He's smart. Hard. Disappointed in his disaster of a daughter."
"Why disappointed?"
"Because I'm not the good one. I'm not Gabriel. I'm not a priest or a saint or whatever perfect thing my brother became." The words taste bitter. "I'm the mess. The party girl who makes headlines for all the wrong reasons."
"That's not all you are."
"It's all he sees."
Silence stretches between us. Not uncomfortable this time. Just… weighted. Then: "When someone's dying, every minute matters. Even the messy ones."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Yes."
The single word carries weight, stories he won't tell, ghosts he won't name. I think about him in Afghanistan, the things that make him do pull-ups until his hands bleed. The people he couldn't save. The ones he could.
The estate appears through the gates. Sprawling Mediterranean elegance behind walls and palm trees my mother planted when I was small. Every inch holds memories I've spent years trying to forget.
At the estate gates, Nico's hand moves to his hip where his gun sits. Just a twitch, but I catch it. Always ready. Always watching for threats. Even here, even now.
Security recognizes us both, waves us through. Down the drive lined with royal palms, each one a monument to my mother's love of beauty, her need to make everything around her as lovely as she was.
I dig my nails into my palm. "I'm not ready for this."
"No one ever is." Nico's eyes remain fixed on the road ahead, his jaw a hard line.
"Have you watched someone die?"
A pause. His hands tighten on the wheel until his knuckles go white. "Yes."
I turn to the window, press my forehead against the cool glass. "Does it get easier?"
"No." He shifts in his seat, shoulders tensing beneath his jacket. "But you survive it."
"I'm not sure I'm built for surviving."
"You've survived everything else." His voice is certain, like he's stating facts rather than faith. "You'll survive this too."
The house looms before us. Beautiful, cold, full of ghosts. The last time I was here was Christmas. I was drunk before noon, Gabriel was silent in his collar, and our father looked at us both like strangers wearing his children's faces.
