Back at La Sirena, our upstairs suite smells like the coffee Gabriel made this morning, hours ago, a lifetime ago.
Gabriel sits at the small table with a pen and paper, handwritten, the kind of letter nobody writes anymore. His penmanship is careful, measured, each word chosen like evidence.
I don't read over his shoulder, but I can see the formal structure. "Most Reverend," it begins. The Church language of requesting laicisation. Proper Latin terms threading through English sentences.
I move around him, giving him space while staying close. The counter needs clearing — those cold pancakes, the morning's coffee mugs. Small tasks that keep me present without intruding.
He signs his name with deliberate strokes, then sets down the pen.
He doesn't fold the letter immediately. He sits for a moment with his hands open on the table, looking at what he's written. Eight years of daily mass. Of hands that knew the weight of the chalice, the texture of the stole, the silence of a church at dawn. Two paragraphs to end it, and his penmanship didn't even waver.
I watch him breathe through it — one long exhale, eyes closed, the way he used to breathe before he stepped into the confessional. Putting something down.
Then he folds the letter. Precisely, two creases, the way he does everything.
"I need to call Tomás," he says, sealing the envelope. "Let him know before the diocese does."
"Will he be surprised?"
"No.He saw this coming before I did. Always knew I was running, not following." A ghost of a smile crosses his face. "He said God doesn't live in buildings. Never has."
I fold a teatowel and place it on the table. "What will your father say about you leaving the church?"
Gabriel finishes addressing the envelope, then looks up and shrugs. "He'll probably say it's about time."
I make a small humming sound, not sure how to feel about Gabriel leaving the priesthood. I should feel guilty, probably, but I don’t.
"So now you’re an unemployed bum," I say.
His lips twitch. “Lucky I’ve got a rich girlfriend.”
The reality sits in the air between us. I have thirty million dollars in my bank account. Mine. Not Delgado money. Not Markovic money. Money I extracted from the machine that caged me.
"You're completely free," Gabriel adds, like he's reading my thoughts. "No obligations. No debts. No one hunting you."
The money means I could disappear. Tokyo, maybe, or some Oregon town where the Markovics are just a bad dream. Six months of running taught me I can survive alone anywhere.
Gabriel's chair scrapes back, and within the space of two heartbeats, he is in front of me, filling my vision, his hand gripping my chin.
"You're not fucking going anywhere, angel," he growls.
I grin up at him.
"No," I agree, "I'm not."
He makes coffee he doesn't drink. Stands at the window with the cup going cold in his hands, and I know that posture now — the stillness of a man building toward something he doesn't know how to start.
"Just say it," I tell him.
He turns. Sets down the cup.
"In the hotel. What I said about Elena and Cristian — about my hands being the same—" He stops. "I need you to know I don't believe that anymore. That I can see the difference now."
I wait.
"Elena was loss of control. I was twenty and I didn't know my own strength and there was no thought, just—" the word costs him— "aftermath. Cristian was a choice. I knew what I was doing. I could have stopped." He looks at his hands the way he's been looking at them since he was twenty years old. "I spent eight years deciding those were the same thing. That the wanting itself was the danger."
"They're not the same thing," I say.
