Which means the Delgado empire, Gabriel's family, the name on the Foundation, the dying patriarch whose medical forms are spread across the kitchen table, is connected to the Rosettis. Not adjacently. Not casually. Intimately enough that the daughter is visiting, being welcomed into the fold.
My mouth goes dry. Gabriel's world just expanded in my mind from "wealthy Miami family" to something significantly more. The priest in the collar isn't just a rich man's son who ran away. He's the son of a family that sits at the same table as the Rosettis. The same ecosystem as Il Lusso. The same stratum of power that Julian spent his entire career trying to reach.
I file it. All of it. The Rosetti name, the connection, the scale. I file it under Gabriel and think the distance between the man making me bad eggs yesterday morning and the world he comes from is larger than I understood.
A chill of realization runs down my spine. I’m all but fucking a man whose family could find out who I was married to. Who could, if they chose, hand me to the Markovics on a silver plate.
Gabriel's fingers brush mine under the table, brief, hidden from Logan's view, but the touch steadies us both. He's noticed my reaction, offering comfort without breaking his conversation. The small gesture makes my chest tight.
Gabriel reads the documents, then signs where indicated. Logan watches with a stillness I recognize, the stillness of someone holding something back. The paperwork is the excuse. The payload is something else.
The transaction is almost complete, papers signed, folder closed, when Logan says, without looking up:
"She's doing well, by the way. Since you didn't ask."
The temperature drops. Gabriel's hand tightens on the pen.
"I was going to ask."
"When? Before or after you disappeared for another decade?"
The words are quiet. That's what makes them devastating. Logan doesn't raise his voice but delivers the line with the same polished control.
Logan's voice stays even, but underneath I hear something raw.
"I watched your sister go through almost a decade of clubs and tabloids and substances I couldn't identify and men who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as her. Years of showing up at La Sirena at two in the morning because no one else would. Endless nights of pouring her into cars and cleaning up her mess and lying to your father about how bad it was."
Watching Gabriel take Logan's verbal punishment makes something twist in my chest. This is the man who dropped to his knees for me on an altar, and now he's being reminded of every person he failed before me. I want to defend him. I want to run. Iwant to take his hand and tell Logan that Gabriel is trying, God, he's trying, but that's not my story to tell. Instead, I shift closer to him, just slightly, letting my knee press against his under the table. He doesn't acknowledge it, but I feel the tension in his body ease a fraction.
The silence does the work.
"She's better now. She put herself back together. Nico helped. I helped. You didn't. You were here." He looks around the rectory, the bare walls, the empty kitchen that I've only just begun to fill. "Doing whatever this is."
The gesture encompasses everything: the priesthood, the self-punishment, the eight-year exile. Logan's hand sweeps the rectory as if it's evidence in a case he's been building since Gabriel left.
Gabriel says nothing for a long time. Then, quietly:
"You're right."
It's not what Logan expected. I can see it, the fractional shift in his composure, the half-second where the prepared argument meets an admission instead of a defense and doesn't know where to land.
"I know what I did," Gabriel says. "I know what it cost her. I know what it cost you. I abandoned her when she needed me. I don't have a defense for it."
Logan looks at him. The fury is still there. Years of fury don't evaporate because someone agrees with you. But something else enters his expression. Not forgiveness, too early for that. Recognition, maybe. The acknowledgment that the man sitting across from him is not the man who left.
His eyes flick to me.
"Be careful, Miss Sera," Logan says, his voice carrying a warning wrapped in silk. "The Delgado men have a habit of destroying the women they love."
Gabriel shifts again, that predator tension returning. "Logan."
He picks up the folder. Straightens the papers. Reassembles his professional exterior.
"Wednesday," he says. "The lawyers need those by Wednesday. I'll have a courier pick them up."
Gabriel walks Logan to the door. They exchange words I can't hear, low, private, the frequency of two men who have more to say than one visit can hold. I stay at the table, trying to slow my racing pulse, trying to process the Rosetti connection and what it means for my safety. For Gabriel's. For whatever this thing between us is becoming.
But Logan, on his way out, stops in the kitchen doorway. Looks at me. The full assessment again, but this time he holds it a beat longer. I meet his gaze steadily, even though my heart is hammering.
