“They’ll come around.”
“Like Marco with Sofia?”
The parallel hangs between us. Two women choosing love over protocol. Two brothers holding impossible positions.
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” She pulls back enough to meet my eyes. “She chose Alexei over blood. I chose you over… what? Terminal isolation? Drowning in champagne?” She touches my face, and my body responds to the contact despite everything. “Maybe that’s what family is. Choosing each other despite the costs.”
The words embed themselves in my chest. Theodore Rosetti breathing his first breaths in Chicago. Sofia somewhere, loving from a distance, locked out by the brother who won’t bend. And Marisol here, having watched everything, understanding more than she should.
“You want to belong to a family like that?” I ask. “Even seeing the broken parts?”
Her thumb traces my jaw. “Perfect families are fiction. Real ones are chaos and bad love sometimes. But they show up. Even through screens. Even from a distance.”
She’s right. Despite the fractures, we show up. Everyone except Sofia, who can’t get past Marco’s walls.
Unlike her brother. Gabriel, the priest who is never there when his own sister needs him.
“She’ll come back,” Marisol says, thinking of me while I’m thinking of her. “Sofia. Maybe not tomorrow. But when Marco’s ready to stop punishing them both.”
“You sound certain.”
“Three AM calls used to mean someone was dying. Tonight it meant someone was born. Things change.” She settles against my chest, her ass pressing against me through the sheets. “Even stubborn Rosetti brothers who think the world runs on their timeline.”
Dawn floods the penthouse now, painting everything gold. In Chicago, my family is probably still camped out in hospitalchairs. Faith holding Theodore. Luca standing watch. Marco pretending Sofia’s message meant nothing while it burns through his phone’s memory.
And here, the woman who watched everything curls against me, already drifting toward sleep.
She’s wrong about one thing. She already belongs. Marco confirmed it, even without saying it. Bring her to Chicago. Not a suggestion. A direct order.
When this is over, when Cesar is neutralized, when Miami is secured, I’ll bring her home. Let them see her properly. Let them observe what I see. Not the disaster in the headlines but the woman who understands broken families and loves anyway.
For now, she breathes against my chest, and I count each one. Not days since Sofia left. Not pull-ups or threats or kill assessments.
Just breaths. Hers and mine. Proof we’re here, together, belonging to each other even if we don’t belong anywhere else.
23 - Marisol
The key feels wrong in my hand. Too heavy for something so small, like it’s gathered weight from the eight years it’s spent in my desk drawer. Eight years since I locked the Calypso Room. Eight years of walking past that third door on the left, pretending it doesn’t exist.
My brain helpfully supplies a list of things I'd rather do than use this key: root canal without anesthesia, watch my yacht photos on a loop, let Nico pour bitter military coffee down my throat until I explode. All preferable to opening a door I've spent eight years pretending doesn't exist.
"This investor wants that specific room?" Nico's voice carries the kind of edge that means he's already made up his mind. "The one that's been sealed?"
"Cesar says he's particular." I keep my voice light, like this isn't eating me alive from the inside. "Old Cuban money. He saw some old photos, loves the Art Deco details. The blue wallpaper in that suite is apparently exactly what his grandmother had in Havana."
Nico's jaw tightens. He's been suspicious of Cesar since we discovered the tracking, the financial threads, the betrayal wearing an uncle's warm smile. But this is my club. My ghosts to face.
"It's a power play," he says. "Making you open a room you've kept locked."
"Maybe." I turn the key over in my palm, feeling its teeth bite into my skin. "Or maybe it's time. Eight years is long enough to be afraid of wallpaper."
I know what Nico thinks: that Cesar is orchestrating something. Maybe he is. But if I don't face this room now, on my terms, I'll spend the rest of my life letting him use my fear against me. Tonight, I take back what's mine.
"Marisol."
"I need this meeting." The words come out sharper than intended. "The investor's legitimate. Logan vetted him. If he puts money into La Sirena, it undermines the embezzlement narrative. Shows I'm running a real business, not just playing dress-up with Daddy's empire."
