She laughs sharp and wounded. “You can’t even protect yourself from your own choices.”
“Don’t do this,” I push, because I can feel her slipping through my fingers and panic is an ugly thing.
“I’m doing it,” she says.
She opens the latch on Disco’s cage carefully. Disco hops onto her finger and puffs up, then settles against her palm like he belongs there. Darling lifts him to her shoulder, and he presses into her hair like he’s claiming home.
Then she looks at me, eyes bright and furious.
“You want to keep me safe?” she asks. “Stop making me collateral in your war with Carmen. Stop making me the reason the club whispers. Stop telling me where I’m allowed to breathe.”
My hand lifts, then stops in the air like a confession.
“Cariño,” I start.
She shakes her head. “No. You listen. I’m not staying here while you play king and pretend you don’t have a queen in your bed.”
Heat flashes up my spine.
“I haven’t touched her,” I say too quick, and it isn’t a lie, but the mess is still there. “Not since you saw.”
Darling’s eyes flicker like she doesn’t know if she believes me, like she doesn’t want to. “Doesn’t matter,” she whispers. “You’re still hers on paper. She’s still standing there like she owns you. And you let her.”
My chest burns with words I can’t say in front of these walls. I can’t tell her she’s the only reason I ever wanted anything beyond survival.
She takes a step back.
Disco chirps sharp, warning, as if he knows danger when it’s close.
Darling’s voice cracks just a little, and that crack breaks something in me.
“You told me you loved me,” she says. “Then you sent me away. Then you dragged me back. Then you let me get hurt again. I’m done riding your rollercoaster, Diablo.”
“Don’t leave,” I say, raw.
Darling stares at me like she’s fighting something inside herself, like she wants to fall into me and hates herself for it.
Then she swallows and turns away.
“Watch me,” she says.
She walks out, Disco on her shoulder, spine straight, face set like stone.
Vice moves to block her path on instinct, then freezes when I lift my hand.
I don’t stop her.
I already did that once, and it destroyed her.
I follow to the balcony overlooking the clubhouse and watch her cross the room while Saints turn to stare and the air shifts around her like she’s a storm. She doesn’t look at anyone. She doesn’t look at Carmen. She doesn’t look at me.
She walks out the front door into the Miami night, neon and heat swallowing her whole.
And the second she’s gone, I know one thing for certain.
Letting Rico walk was mercy for Darling, not for him. Because now that Darling’s out there alone again, Rico just became a problem I cannot afford to leave breathing.
Miami can look pretty all it wants.
