The accusation lands exactly where she meant it to.
Then she turns on her heel, and is gone.
22 - Gabriel
Ifind Sera in the kitchen at two in the morning, organizing spices in the harsh fluorescent light. Glass bottles click against each other as she arranges them by color, then height, then some system only she understands. The lingering scent of dinner’s asopao soup still clings to the air, mixing with the lavender she uses to clean. Her back is to me, but not fully. She’s angled so I stay in her peripheral vision, body positioned to track any movement I make.
I watch from the doorway for a full minute. When I shift my weight, her shoulders tighten, just a fraction, but I catch it. When I breathe too deeply, her hands pause in their organizing, waiting to see if the sound means movement. She keeps both hands visible at all times, never reaching into drawers or cabinets where she can't maintain that peripheral awareness.
I test it. Step further into the room, deliberately heavy-footed. She doesn't startle. That would be too obvious. Instead, she shifts her stance, weight redistributing to the balls of her feet. Ready to move. Ready to run.
I reach past her for a glass, careful not to actually touch her, and watch her lean away. Subtle, but there. The same micro-flinch she described doing with Julian when his mood was uncertain.
My jaw clenches. She's monitoring me. After days of this careful dance, I finally see it clearly: she's treating me like a threat to be managed.
"You're doing it again," I say.
She doesn't turn. "Doing what?"
"Reading my jaw tension. Tracking my hands. Positioning yourself so you can reach the door." My voice comes out flat, controlled. "Running Julian's safety protocols on me."
The bottle of oregano in her hand stills. For three heartbeats, she doesn't move at all. Then she sets it down and turns to face me fully. The first time in days she's looked at me straight on. The wooden spoon leans against the wall beside her, Abuela Rosa's inheritance watching our confrontation.
"And you're not?" Her voice cuts like glass. "You visited your father. Came back with your shoulders different. Your eyes different. Like you're three different men wearing the same face, and none of them want to look at me."
She steps forward, hands gripping the counter behind her. "Yesterday at breakfast, when Logan called about security protocols, you switched. I watched it happen. Gabriel the priest evaporated and Gabriel Delgado appeared, all business and calculated distance. Then when Adrian came in joking about the Nico and Marisol, you switched again. The friend, the brother, warm and present. But the second he left, the walls went back up."
My chest tightens because she's right. She's been watching me compartmentalize the same way I've been watching her manage perceived threats.
"When you're handling family business," she continues, voice gaining heat, "you perform the Delgado prince so perfectly. The voice, the posture, the careful distance. Then you come back and can't even sit at the table with me. You ate standing up like you used to in Homestead, like we haven't been sharing meals for weeks. Like you're punishing yourself for something you haven't even done."
She steps closer, eyes blazing. "Prince-Gabriel handling family business, friend-Gabriel with the found family, andwhatever version of you fucked me in that sacristy. All kept in tidy little vaults that never have to meet. You're following your father's pattern exactly. Building walls between every version of yourself so you never have to reconcile who you really are."
The accusation lands hard, breath leaving my lungs. Because she's right. I've been doing exactly what my father taught me. Everything in its proper space, clean separation between the different pieces of myself.
"At least I'm not treating you like you might hurt me," I fire back, the words tasting bitter.
"Aren't you?" She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Yesterday when I reached for your hand at dinner, you pulled away. Not obviously. You covered it by reaching for the salt. But you pulled away. When I tried to talk about what Milo found, you redirected to parish logistics, finding a cover for next Sunday. When Adrian asked how long I was staying, you said 'we'll see' like I'm temporary, like you're already planning my exit strategy."
"That's not—"
"And this morning," she cuts me off, "when I came out of the shower in your robe, you turned away. Actually turned your back like the sight of me in your things was painful. You're keeping yourself in neat compartments so I never get all of you at once. How is that not self-protection?"
Her voice cracks on the last word, and suddenly her careful posture collapses. Her hands shake as she grips the counter, fingers clenched into claws, shoulders caving inward like she's trying to hold something in.
"You want to know what I've been hiding? Fine." The words pour out like water through a broken dam. "I've been using an alias. Sera Marin, my mother's name, clean, untraceable to Julian. I've been meeting Reyes at his office."
She pushes hair back from her face with trembling fingers. "The first meeting, I went as the grieving widow. Let him think I was helpless. He bought it completely, started explaining vault protocols like I was a child who needed education."
My stomach drops, but she's not stopping.
"The second meeting, I played dumber. Asked about security tiers, let him preen and lecture. He told me about the graduated access systems. Biometric scanners at entry, secondary authentication at the vault level. Some require dual-key systems, but most clients prefer single-point access now. More convenient, he said, like he was doing me a favor by explaining."
Her breathing is ragged now, everything flooding out at once.
"I've decoded Julian's ring. VA is the jurisdiction prefix, but not a state code. It’s some bank in New York. November third, 2018, when Julian made the deposit. The five-character string that unlocks everything."
The revelations hit me in waves, each detail another weight added to my chest. But she's still going.
