She looks at me. Her face opens slightly — not relief, but the recognition of someone told an honest thing instead of a comfortable one. "So, are you sticking around?" she asks.
I grin. “Yep."
"I've never known how to leave," she says plainly. "I stay because I don't know how not to."
I hear the weight in that and don't push on it. I just sit with her for a moment, our shoulders close, the candle burning low between us.
Juliet is beside her, and she is worse off.
Her hands are twisted together in her lap, fingers working over each other. I reach over and cover them with mine.
She looks up.
"I keep seeing that Santiago creep," she says. Her voice is very small. "He said he'd remember me and I can't stop feeling like he will. Like he’s already mapped out my future."
"He doesn't have that power," I say. "It’s just words. That's all he has."
"It didn't feel like just words."
I keep my hand over hers. Her hands stay still in my grip — not relaxed, just held. She looks toward the door once, briefly, then back at the table. Not better. Just not alone in it.
I return to my seat. Logan catches my eye — a brief question from a man who has been watching me while pretending to listen to Nico.
"She’s okay," I say quietly.
He nods once. His hand moves to my knee under the table, warm and steady, staying there while the conversation shifts.
Marisol is at Gabriel's ear, the siblings folded toward each other. I catch fragments — Jorge's name, twice. Then Marisol's voice, lower than I've heard it tonight: "— and I keep waiting to feel sadder than I feel. Is that bad?"
Gabriel doesn't answer right away. His eyes close briefly.
"No," he says. "It's just accurate."
She huffs — small, wet, the closest thing to a laugh. "He'd hate that we're being this honest about him."
"He hated everything." A pause. "Except money."
She leans into him. His arm comes around her.
I think about grief traveling in different shapes through different bodies. I think about sitting beside my mother while she shivered in a room that was seventy-two degrees, checking the thermostat again because the number had to eventually make sense. I think about all the years since and how I came to Miami looking for fear and found this instead. A table full of people who have held enormous losses and still make room for others.
Marisol tilts her head back slightly. Not crying, but close. Gabriel's arm comes around her.
What they have, I didn't have. A person who knew the same person you're missing, present in the same room. I missed my mother alone because my father couldn't stay and there was no one else. I don't let the thought turn into self-pity — just acknowledge it then set it down.
Logan's hand tightens on my knee once. He didn't see what I was watching, but he felt the shift in me. He does that — registers the small tremors before I've named them.
I put my hand over his.
Nico sets down his fork. The table quiets.
"Héctor is regrouping," he says. "Ramón is recruiting from crews we thought were loyal — three of them in the past two weeks. The money is moving." He looks at Logan. "Santiago's quiet."
"That's worse than noise," Logan says.
Nico nods once. "We cost them something at the Gilded Lily. They'll want it back. The next move will be patient and specific." A pause, brief and hard. "Jimmy's thread is closed. The leak is sealed. But they built from what he gave them, and that information doesn't un-exist."
The table holds the statement. Nobody looks away from it.
