“I’m telling you this once,” Nina says. “And then I’m going to do my job, which is to help you both become better versions of yourselves. But I needed you to know where I stand. I needed you to understand that I see you clearly. Both of you. The good and the monstrous. The rescuers and the killers. I’m not going to pretend otherwise anymore.”
She sits back. The silence stretches.
“Do you have anything to say?” she asks.
Vicente is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rougher than I’ve ever heard it.
“No,” he says. “You’re right.”
I realize I’ve stopped breathing.
The session shifts after that. Nina’s laid her cards on the table, and now she’s back to doing her job, but the dynamic has changed. There’s no pretense left. No careful diplomatic hedging.
“Tell me about Rafael,” she says. “How are things progressing?”
Vicente’s posture eases slightly at the subject change. “He’s been staying at the compound while I recover. Getting to know the family.”
“Celeste adores him,” Arturo adds. “She’s already planning Christmas dinner around his preferences.”
“He’s remarkable.” Vicente’s voice carries a warmth I’ve rarely heard from him. “Cambridge-educated. International law. Speaks four languages fluently. His mother kept him completely hidden for thirty years, built him an identity so clean it took federal databases a week to crack it.”
Wyatt leans toward me. “Alejandro Vicente Prieto,” he murmurs, more to himself than me. “Became Rafael Marcano at eighteen. Selena had the whole thing set up before he graduated secondary school.”
I nod. We’d gotten the full story from Rafael himself in the hospital: how his mother constructed his new identity layer by layer, how he’d lived as Rafael Marcano through Cambridge and beyond, how the “ghost” had a digital footprint that was deliberately boring. Clean credit history, unremarkable social media, a paper trail that led nowhere interesting.
On screen, Nina tilts her head. “You sound proud of him.”
“I am.” Vicente pauses. “Though I can’t claim any credit for how he turned out. That belongs entirely to Selena. She raised him. Shaped him. Kept him safe from my world while making sure he had every advantage.”
“Do you wish you’d known him sooner?”
“Every day.” The words come out rough. “But I understand why she did it. My life wasn’t safe for a child. She made the right choice.”
Nina gives him space to breathe. “You said Selena kept Rafael safe from your world. Tell me about that world—how you came to be part of it.”
Vicente and Arturo exchange a look. Something passes between them that I can’t read.
“The Prieto family has owned resorts in Cancún for generations,” Vicente says finally. “Lola and Selena’s father, Alejandro—he found us. Arturo and me. We were boys. Twelve, maybe thirteen.”
“We’d been taken,” Arturo says quietly. “Moved through channels that didn’t care about names or ages. Just product.”
My stomach drops. Beside me, Wyatt goes very still.
“Alejandro ran clean operations,” Vicente continues. “But the men who passed through those resorts—some of them had appetites. Thought their money made them untouchable.” His jaw tightens. “One of them bought access to us. Alejandro found out. He... handled it.”
“He took us in after,” Arturo says. “Gave us work. Mentored us. Taught us how to spot predators. How to handle problems quietly.”
“Arturo was lucky.” Vicente’s voice has gone flat in a way I recognize—the dissociation of recounting something too big to feel. “He was only held for a few days before Alejandro intervened. I wasn’t as fortunate. The man who bought me had time to—” He stops. Swallows. “He had time.”
The conference room feels too small suddenly. I can’t breathe.
“It would have been easy to become what we hated,” Arturo says. “Men like us, with our histories—that kind of rage can twist you into the same monster. But Lola wouldn’t let us forget what her father built. What he stood for.”
On screen, Nina’s expression hasn’t changed, but I know her well enough to see the recalibration happening behind her eyes. I’m not feeling quite as composed as her, and I’m grateful for Wyatt’s grounding touch.
“Thank you for sharing that,” she says carefully. “I want to acknowledge how significant it is that you’ve trusted me with this.” She pauses. “And I also want to be clear—what happened to you as a child was horrific. It explains certain patterns. But it doesn’t excuse them. The harm you experienced doesn’t give you permission to perpetuate harm on others.”
“No,” Vicente says. “It doesn’t.”
