Carmen’s eyes flash. “I know Miami. I know the Saints. And I know what I married into.”
Diablo’s voice cuts sharp. “You didn’t marry into anything.”
Silence slams down like a door.
Carmen’s smile freezes, cracks, then she catches it and turns it into something sweeter for the hallway.
“Engaged,” she says, enunciating. “Not married. Yet.”
Yet hangs like a countdown.
“I want to talk,” she says.
“We’ll talk later,” Diablo answers.
“No,” Carmen says. “We’ll talk now. Because every minute you stand here, someone is taking a picture. Somebody is texting somebody. Somebody is whispering.”
She looks at me again like I am a stain on a white dress. “This girl will cost you.”
Diablo steps closer to Carmen, body cutting her off from me completely. His voice drops into something controlled and terrifying.
“She’s not a cost,” he says. “She’s mine.”
Mine hits me like a punch. Possession and protection and confession tangled together.
Carmen’s eyes widen just a hair, then narrow. I can see her calculating, turning emotion into leverage.
She leans in close to Diablo, voice too soft for anyone else.
“If you choose her publicly,” she murmurs, “I will take everything from you privately.”
My blood goes cold.
Diablo doesn’t blink. “Try.”
Carmen’s lips part, almost a smile. “I will.”
Then she straightens, face snapping back into the polished mask. She touches Diablo’s arm as a public claim. He does not flinch, but he does not lean into it either.
“Get your mess cleaned up,” she says. “And remember who made you.”
Diablo’s eyes go flat. “I made me.”
Carmen turns to leave, heels clicking like gunshots. At the door she looks back at me once, and there is no jealousy there.
Just strategy.
The door shuts behind her and the room can breathe again.
I can’t.
My hands shake under the blanket. My throat tightens like it is being dragged by a chain.
Diablo turns back to me slowly like he is bracing for a fight.
“You’re engaged,” I say, voice steady even though it hurts. “Are you ever going to tell me why you keep acting like I’m yours when you’ve got a ring waiting on you?”
His face tightens. He comes closer, then stops a few feet away like he is giving me space he doesn’t want to give.
