“Of course they’re going too,” Chris mutters. “Because this family couldn’t be more goddamn tangled if we tried.”
“I think I’m going to go,” I say. “But you don’t have to. I know it’s complicated, but if you’d rather the three of us spend Thanksgiving together, just us, that’s fine too.”
“No.” Chris’s voice is sharp. “You can’t go.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“It’s not safe. You’d be walking into their territory, surrounded by their people, with limited backup.”
“I’d have Darius and Lucia.”
“Who’d be outnumbered twenty to one in a fortified compound we’ve never mapped. If something goes wrong, extraction would be nearly impossible.”
“Chris,” Wyatt says carefully.
“Don’t.” Chris turns on him. “Don’t tell me I’m overreacting. We just spent days talking about Rafael, about potential threats, about how Nina’s the soft target. Now she wants to walk directly into the center of their world?”
“Who’s Rafael?” I ask.
“A ghost,” Wyatt says.
“A threat,” Chris says at the same time.
They exchange a look. I wait, but neither elaborates.
“Great. That’s helpful.” I don’t bother hiding my frustration. “Look, the compound is probably one of the most secure places I could be,” I counter. “And Vicente and Arturo aren’t a threat to me. They’re still figuring out how to be together again after years apart. What their relationship looks like now. It’s not that different from what we’re doing.” I pause, trying to articulate what I’ve observed in our sessions. “I think after sharing what they’ve shared, they see me as family—not just a therapist. And by extension, you two as well. I’ve watched how they are with people they consider theirs. They’d burn the world down before letting anything happen to family.”
A complicated expression that might be fear flickers across Chris’s face—there and gone so fast I almost miss it.
“This is them testing boundaries,” he says, voice flatter than before. “Seeing how much access you’ll give them. How far you’ll blur professional lines.”
“Or it’s just dinner. With family.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘just dinner’ with men like Vicente and Arturo.” Chris’s jaw is tight. “Every invitation has an agenda. Every gesture is calculated.”
“Chris, I hear you. But you’re asking me to distrust my own read on these men based on something you won’t tell me about.” I keep my voice steady. “Help me understand. Because right now I’m making clinical judgments without all the information, and that’s what’s dangerous.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then explain it to me. Help me understand why you’re so convinced this is dangerous.”
We stare at each other across the kitchen. Wyatt looks between us, clearly calculating intervention points.
“They’re cartel,” Chris finally says. “Former, maybe. Protected, definitely. But that doesn’t change what they are at their core. What they’re capable of.”
“I know what they are.”
“Do you? Because you keep talking about them like they’re just two complicated men trying to do better. But Vicente Amador—” He stops. Forces control back into his voice. “He’s not a good man, Nina. He never was.”
“I never said he was good. I said he was complex. Human.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive with being dangerous.”
“I know that too.”
Wyatt shifts. “What if we go with her?”
Both Chris and I turn to stare at him.
