The door. Third on the left. The Calypso Room.
I freeze completely. Through the small window, blue wallpaper with silver Art Deco patterns. The same blue that haunts my nightmares. The same patterns I saw behind Gabriel's shoulder when…
Eight years collapse. I'm eighteen again, racing up these stairs because Gabriel called, voice strange, desperate. Finding him outside this door, white-faced, shaking. "Mari, she's not breathing, she wanted me… her lips are blue…"
Inside. The woman on the bed. Young, beautiful, still. The room cold despite the Miami heat. Gabriel's panicked breathing the only sound. Lips blue from lack of oxygen, not cold. Eyes open, staring at nothing. Not sleeping. Not unconscious. Gone.
"What did you DO?"
"Nothing! She just stopped breathing. I swear, I didn’t do anything."
My chest feels like someone's sitting on it. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision. The hallway narrows. I reach for the wall, miss completely. My knees are buckling.
Arms catch me before I hit the floor. Solid, warm, steady. Nico. Even through my panic, my body recognizes him, leans into his strength.
"Marisol. Look at me."
I can't. I'm still seeing the room, the body, Gabriel's hands shaking.
"MARISOL."
His voice cuts through the flashback. I blink, and he's there, hands on my shoulders, face inches from mine.
"Breathe. You're here. You're safe."
"The room, I can't, Gabriel…"
"You're not in the past. You're here. With me. Breathe."
He doesn't ask questions, just extracts me from the hallway, down the stairs, through the club to a back exit. Into the car. Home.
I shake the whole drive, can't stop. My hands won't stop moving, picking at my cuticles until they bleed, a habit from those first weeks after. The memories keep crashing over me: the dead woman's face, Gabriel sobbing, my own voice saying "I'll help you, we'll fix this," even though we both knew nothing could be fixed.
At my penthouse, Nico sits me on the couch, brings water I don't drink. Sits across from me and waits.
"Tell me."
Two words. Not a demand. Just availability. When he says it, his command voice slides down my spine like fingers, and I hate that my body still responds after last night's rejection. But something in me breaks completely.
"Gabriel is my brother. Older. Perfect. My mother's favorite, everyone's favorite." I stare at my hands, watch them tremble. "When Mom died, I was seventeen. Her last words were 'Try to be good, like your brother.'"
Nico doesn't react, just listens.
"Six months later. I was eighteen. Gabriel called me in the middle of the night. Asked me to come to La Sirena. To the private rooms."
The memory is so vivid I can smell it: jasmine from the diffuser, the metallic scent that might have been blood from where she'd bitten her tongue.
"There was a woman inside. On the bed. Young. Beautiful." My voice cracks. "Dead."
"How?"
"Gabriel was… he said she just stopped breathing. Maybe a heart attack or something. Blue lips. Such a deep, rich blue." The words come out fragmented, matching how fragmented I felt that night. "She stopped breathing and he didn't notice until…" I can't finish, but he understands.
"An accident."
"Yes. She was so young. How can that happen to someone so young?" I finally look at him. "I was eighteen. My mother had just died. My brother was falling apart. And there was a dead woman in a room, and he was begging me to help him."
"What did you do?"
