“To be left alone to run her business,” Arturo says. “But that’s not how our world works. There’s always someone who thinks they deserve what you’ve built.”
“Someone specific?” I press gently, returning to safer ground.
Vicente leans back, studying me. For a moment, I think he’s going to deflect. Then he says, “There’s always someone specific. But the clever ones don’t announce themselves. They move through proxies, through legitimate channels. They think patience makes them invisible.”
“But you see them.”
“We see patterns,” Arturo corrects. “Old habits. The Eastern Europeans always move the same way—through the ports first, then inland. They think water makes them safe.”
Water. Ports. Dragons. The pieces are there, but coded, layered.
“How does that make you feel?” I ask, returning to the therapeutic frame. “Seeing these patterns but being unable to act?”
“Relief,” Vicente says immediately. “Do you know how exhausting it is to be responsible for everyone’s safety? To know that any decision could get someone killed?”
“Now it’s Celeste’s burden,” I observe.
“Yes.” Arturo’s voice is heavy. “And we can’t protect her from it.”
“Would you, if you could?”
“No,” Vicente says, surprising me. “She needs to build her own empire. Make her own mistakes. We can offer wisdom, but she has to learn the cost herself.”
“And what is the cost?”
“Everything demands sacrifice,” Arturo says. “We sacrificed each other for thirty years. Now we’re sacrificing relevance for freedom. Celeste will sacrifice something too. We just hope it’s not herself or the men she loves.”
19
Nina
“You mentioned found family earlier,” I redirect slightly. “How does that concept reconcile with the blood family you have?”
“Blood is accident,” Vicente says. “Choice is intention.”
“Mason isn’t blood,” Arturo adds. “Neither is his daughter Zoey. But they’re family. More than some who share our DNA.”
“That must have been an adjustment.”
Vicente laughs, but it rings hollow. “Everything’s an adjustment. Learning to trust again after thirty years? Adjustment. Accepting that what felt like abandonment was just... fear? Major adjustment.”
Arturo’s jaw tightens. “We don’t need to?—”
“Maybe we do,” Vicente says quietly. “Maybe that’s exactly what we need to do.”
I sense the shift, the sudden weight in the room. “What happened that created such distance?”
They exchange a look—not asking permission, more like gauging who will speak first.
“It was 1995,” Arturo says carefully. “Celeste was three. Lola was trying to hold us together—all three of us—but Vicente and I...” He stops, searching for words.
“We had been intimate,” Vicente says quietly. “The night Celeste was conceived.”
Arturo’s jaw works. “And I ran. I could not reconcile what I wanted with who I thought I was supposed to be. By ‘95, we were still business partners, with Lola trying to bridge the divide, but even with her efforts there remained this gulf between us that neither of us knew how to cross.”
“Lola thought a family gathering would help,” Arturo continues. “That if we could sit at the same table, share a meal, maybe we would remember why we mattered to each other. Her sister Selena came up from Mexico with their mother.”
Vicente’s expression goes distant. Memory, regret, and shame flicker across his face before careful neutrality takes hold.
