Except Vicente’s voice has never lost its power over me. And hearing Nina’s voice threaded through the recordings—God. It should be grounding. She’s safety, she’s warmth, she’s everything Vicente isn’t. But instead it’s disorienting, the two of them woven together in my headphones. The woman I love asking careful questions of the man who broke me. Her gentleness meeting his calculation. It makes my chest ache in ways I can’t untangle.
Nina’s asking about their household dynamics. About Elena’s resentment, about Toni, about the complexity of found family built on blood and betrayal.
And Vicente talks about Thanksgiving. Their first together in thirty years.
“Everything’s complicated. But we’re trying anyway.”
I want to laugh. Or throw the laptop across the room.
Trying. As if that’s enough. As if showing up and going through the motions counts for something.
My phone rings. Wyatt. I consider letting it go to voicemail, but that’ll just make him show up here, and I’m not ready to explain what I’ve been doing to myself for the past eighteen hours.
I answer.
“Hey.”
“You okay?” Direct, no preamble.
“Yeah. Just needed space to think.”
“About the intel?”
“Among other things.”
Silence on his end that means he’s choosing his words carefully.
“Nina’s been asking about you,” he says finally. “Not pushing, just... noticing you’re not here.”
Guilt twists in my chest. “I’ll come by later.”
“Chris—”
“I said I’ll come by.”
Another silence, then he says, “Want to tell me what’s actually going on?”
“Nothing’s going on. Just work.”
“Bullshit.” Soft, not accusing. “You’ve been pulling away since Sunday. Since we agreed to Thanksgiving. And I get it—I know this is complicated for you. But shutting us out doesn’t help.”
“I’m not shutting you out.”
“Then what are you doing?”
The question hangs there. Honest. I sense that he wants to understand, not trap me into confession.
Which somehow makes it worse.
“I’m trying to figure out how to walk into that house without falling apart,” I say finally. Raw honesty instead of deflection. “And I don’t know if I can do it.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You want me to find a way to pull us out?”
“We can’t. The intel Tatiana got—there’s a real threat, Wyatt. Contract on both of them, Yakuza involved. We need to be inside their security, see how it’s structured, identify vulnerabilities. And someone should probably tell them, if they don’t already know. They’re supposed to be our assets. Keeping them alive is kind of the point.”
The words taste bitter. Protecting Vicente. Making sure he survives. Part of me wants to choke on the irony.
“This isn’t optional,” I finish.
