The whiskey sits heavy in my empty stomach. My body aches from hours on the cold floor. But I'm still here, waiting for morning, waiting for whatever comes next, because the alternative is letting Julian win from beyond the grave.
Footsteps in the hallway. Gabriel's tread, heavier than usual. Searching.
He appears in the doorway and his eyes go straight to the bag.
29 - Gabriel
My eyes track from the bag to Seraphina, collapsed on the floor. I know this moment. I’ve lived it from both sides. The person who stays, the person who leaves. The choice made in darkness.
"You packed," I say, voice rough from sleep.
She doesn't deny it. Can't. The evidence sits there like a confession.
"Yesterday," she says, "when you killed that man—" she stops, seeming unsure.
"I scared you," I finish for her.
"No." She shakes my head. "That's the problem. I wasn't scared. I was…" She doesn’t say the word, but her body betrays her with a flush that crawls up her neck.
My dick twitches as my eyes widen. I understand exactly what she’s not saying.
"Julian conditioned me to respond to violence," she whispers. "To find power arousing. To stay with dangerous men. I don't know what's me anymore and what's his programming."
"Maybe we're both just collections of other people's influences," I say. "Julian. The church. My father. Your abuela."
"Rosa would hate that idea." She smiles faintly. "She believed in souls. In something underneath everything else that can't be touched."
"What do you believe?"
The question sits heavy between us.
I cross to my angel, movements careful like she’s something that might startle. I crouch beside her, close enough to smell the whiskey on her breath, to see the salt of dried tears. “Tell me you’re not going to leave.”
She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me with eyes that have been crying. Red-rimmed, swollen, the kind of crying that happens in the dark when you’re trying not to make noise. “It will be easier if I just disappear.”
“Easier.” The word burns in my mouth.
“Vanish without a word,” she says, voice hoarse, like she’s been talking to herself all night. “Remove myself from this fucking world of yours.”
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache. Heat rises in my chest, spreading through my arms, my hands. She was going to leave. Without goodbye. Without explanation. Just gone like she never existed here.
I stand abruptly, putting distance between us because if I stay close I might grab her, shake her, beg. My hands curl into fists, knuckles white.
“How could you even think about—” I stop, breathe hard through my nose. The packed bag sits there like evidence of a crime. I want to kick it, scatter her carefully folded clothes across the floor, make leaving messy instead of neat. “You were going to fold our life into that bag and just walk away?”
She’s still on the floor, looking up at me with exhaustion that goes bone-deep. “I’ve done it before. Julian taught me how to disappear. The men before Julian too.” She pushes hair back from her face with a trembling hand. “I know how to become small enough to fit through any exit. How to vanish so completely it’s like I never existed.”
The casual way she says it, like it’s a skill set, like a resume line, makes my chest burn. Sera pushes herself up from the floor, using the cabinet for support. Her legs shake slightly. Howlong was she sitting there? Hours? All night? Standing now, her exhaustion transforms into something sharper.
“And you—” She points at me, finger steady despite everything. “You did exactly the same thing to Marisol.”
The accusation lands hard in my gut.
“Seminary wasn’t a calling, Gabriel. It was abandonment dressed up as faith.” Her voice gains strength with each word. “You left your sister alone with your mother dead and your father dying. Hiding in that collar while Marisol suffocated in clubs and coke and whatever else she could find to fill the hole you left.”
I want to defend myself, to say it was different, but my throat closes around the lie.
“You want to lecture me about leaving?” She’s fully alive now, exhaustion burned away by anger. “You left everyone who loved you. Called it God’s will. Built walls of liturgy and cold showers and called them devotion when really you were just running. Always running. From Elena, from your family, from yourself. Abandoning everyone and calling it holy.”
