"At least fifteen years," Milo says, scrolling through more files. "Maybe longer. Before Julian Reznik, there was another guy, then another. Reyes managed them all."
Julian's name in this room, in this context, makes me step back. Just slightly, weight shifting from the doorframe. Thenanother small movement, and suddenly I'm in the hallway instead of the doorway, my body making the decision before my mind catches up. Retreating from the blast zone.
Gabriel turns from the window. Our eyes meet across the office. Three seconds of perfect honesty: we're both bleeding from this revelation, both trying to figure out if the other is wound or weapon.
"I need air," I say.
Nobody stops me. I walk down the hallway, past the kitchen where my wooden spoon sits beside Logan's good olive oil. Everything I've built here, the belonging I tasted last night, sits on a foundation of laundered blood money. The Delgados, the Markovics, Julian, all of it connected in one massive web of complicity.
The ring weighs against my sternum like an anchor. Six months I've been carrying it, trying to crack its code, and all along it was a map to a vault built with Gabriel's family money. The irony would be funny if it didn't feel like suffocating.
The rooftop air carries salt from the bay and the burnt-sugar smell of rain approaching. Miami spreads below in its twilight transformation: the underwater quality of dusk here, when neon starts to bleed into purple sky. Bass from three different clubs vibrates through my shoes, each rhythm fighting for dominance. I've been up here for hours, turning the ring over in my fingers, tracing the engraving. A code to a vault built on Delgado money, managed by Reyes, stuffed with evidence of everyone's crimes.
I could leave. Pack the wooden spoon, walk out, disappear into Miami's sprawl. I've done it before. Julian taught me how to live inside someone else's framework without leaving fingerprints. The Markovics taught me how to run.
But last night. The flan I made from Rosa's recipe. Gabriel saying grace with his eyes open, looking at each face around the table. Adrian calling me family before knowing my last name.Even Isa, still withholding judgment but present, watching, considering.
I belonged. For one perfect evening, I belonged somewhere.
Footsteps on the stairs. Not Gabriel's. I know his tread now, the weight of him. These are precise, measured. Logan.
He appears in the doorway, back in his armor: the casual sweater from last night replaced with pressed shirt, tailored trousers, the kind of posture that could cut glass. He crosses to the railing, stands beside me but not close. Professional distance.
"You were at Reyes's office this morning."
Not a question. My blood goes cold.
"I know about the Sera Marin alias," he continues, voice perfectly calm. "Have known since you started using it here in Miami. Maiden name, mother's side. Clean. Professional. The kind of alias someone uses when they're investigating something they don't want traced back."
My hands grip the railing. "How long have you been watching?"
"Since I met you in Homestead. Every careful question you asked Adrian about Miami's families." He turns to face me. "I've watched you cook in our kitchen, sleep in Gabriel's bed, become part of this family—while running a parallel investigation under a name that isn't yours. I needed to know if those two things were connected or separate."
"Why didn't you tell Gabriel?"
"Because I protect this family. All of it. Including him. And if you were a threat, I needed to know what kind before I acted."
"And now?"
"Now I know. You're not a threat. You're a victim of the same machine that's grinding all of us." He pauses. "But you're also lying to the man I consider a brother while sleeping in his bed. So now you're going to tell me everything, Ms.Reznik."
The revelation cracks something open. Not breaking but releasing. The exhaustion of carrying secrets alone, of maintaining partitions, of being the only one who knows what I know. Logan has been watching me play house while investigating his family's crimes, and somehow he's not throwing me off the roof.
"I thought you were warming up to me."
"I was warming up to you. Doesn't mean I wasn't also watching. That's what I do. I watch. I calculate. I protect. It's why Jorge hired me, why this family trusts me, why this family still exists despite their best efforts to destroy it. So tell me everything. Starting with the ring."
I could lie. Create another story, another partition. But I'm tired of carrying this alone. And Logan already knows enough to destroy me if he wants. The choice is simple: trust him or run.
I pull the chain from beneath my shirt. The ring swings free, gold catching the rooftop lights. Without ceremony, I pull it over my head and hold it out in my palm.
"Okay. Everything."
Logan takes the ring, examines the engraving. I watch his mind work, see the moment he recognizes the pattern.
"Vault code," he says.
"Julian gave it to me three days before he died. Said it was insurance. That if something happened to him, I'd need it."
