“Celeste makes up for it,” Vicente says. “She and her partners are here. The house stays full enough.”
I first met Maddox when he flew to Denver during Mason’s crisis—he stepped up for his brother without hesitation. Leo and Celeste I only met briefly at the wedding, but their dynamic was impossible to miss.
“Celeste sets the tone,” Vicente continues with subtle pride. “She inherited her mother’s ability to make complicated things work.”
Arturo’s gaze drops slightly—pride weighted with worry. “She’s been carrying too much lately, though.”
I lean forward slightly. “Too much how?”
They exchange a look. Vicente answers first. “She’s taking over aspects of the family business. The legitimate parts, primarily, but the transitions are... complicated.”
“Complicated because you’re under house arrest?”
“Complicated because nature abhors a vacuum,” Arturo says carefully. “When Vicente stepped back, others tried to fill the gaps.”
There’s intelligence here, floating just under the surface. I think of the CIA’s clunky prompts and try to reframe them through a therapeutic lens.
“When you stepped away from your operations in Mexico,” I say, keeping my voice curious before I lead into another CIA prompt, “was there anyone you trusted to maintain what you’d built? Someone you were mentoring, perhaps?”
The question sounds like I’m asking about emotional investment in legacy—the kind of thing a therapist might explore. But Vicente’s eyes narrow slightly, reading the subtext. He knows I’m fishing for something specific, even if I don’t know what.
“No one inherits what I built,” he says carefully. “Not Mexico. The infrastructure there died with my arrest. Anyone claiming otherwise is building on a grave.”
“But it’s a circle of life,” Arturo says. “The old guard falls, new players emerge. It’s ecology.”
“Some of them are quite ambitious,” Vicente adds, stretching the word like he’s tasting it. “Especially the Eastern Europeans. They see opportunity in chaos.”
“But they don’t understand infrastructure,” Arturo says. “They think violence is power. It’s not. Systems are power. Relationships. Legitimate cover.”
“Like our family’s import business,” Vicente says. “The contracts at the port. Beautiful irony—the authorities protect our legitimate interests while missing everything else.”
I make a note, trying to look therapeutic rather than tactical. “It sounds like you’re proud of Celeste’s business acumen.”
“Proud and terrified,” Arturo admits. “She’s swimming with sharks who think they’re dragons.”
“Dragons?” I prompt.
Vicente’s expression doesn’t change, but his focus sharpens. “Men who hoard wealth and guard it viciously. Who think accumulation equals power. They don’t understand that real power is in distribution, in networks.”
“Celeste understands,” Arturo says. “She’s been consolidating the legitimate holdings while letting others fight over scraps.”
“Is that safe?”
“Nothing’s safe,” Vicente says simply. “But she’s smart. She knows they’re too busy fighting each other to notice her building something new.”
“These dragons,” I say carefully, “are they a direct threat?”
“Not to us,” Arturo says. “We are neutered. No power, no territory, no product. Vicente is under house arrest, I am under constant surveillance. Just two old men the agencies watch like hawks.”
It’s such a bald-faced lie that I almost laugh. Two neutered old men don’t travel with security—the bodyguards who wait in my lobby every week, sharp-suited and watchful, gang tattoos creeping up from their collars and past their cuffs, one with a teardrop marking his face. Two neutered old men don’t make Elena rearrange her entire household to accommodate them. They’ve adapted, certainly. But powerless? Not even close.
“But to Celeste?”
They exchange another look, longer this time.
“Everyone’s a threat to Celeste,” Vicente says finally. “She’s young, brilliant, and sitting on infrastructure worth billions. The Europeans want her connections. The Mexicans want her routes. The Americans want her cooperation.”
“And what does Celeste want?”
