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Chapter Eighty-Three: What the Castillo Family Left Behind
publish date:
2026-05-07 01:27:28
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ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred and Five: October in Rome
We fly to Rome on a Tuesday.Seven of us.The six Chicago community members, myself included, and Paz.Lucia stays in Chicago with Dominic.This decision took three days.Not because Dominic pushed back. He didn't. He understood immediately and said so, which was its own kind of adjustment to navigate because when someone removes the argument you were prepared to have, you have to sit with the actual feeling underneath it. It just brings a feeling of understanding.The actual feeling was: I don't want to leave her.Seven months old and I don't want to leave her for four days.I said this to Dominic on the Wednesday before the flight.He said: "I know. Go anyway. They need you. I'll be here for her"I said: "Will she be okay?"He said: "She will be entirely okay. She will also make me tell her everything about Rome when you get back." He says with a knowing smile as he gently tucks my hair away behind my ears. I said looking at him as he is also looking down at me: "She's just seven m
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred and Four: Telling Paz
We call her Saturday morning.Elena sits at the kitchen table with the box open in front of her and her phone in her hands and the specific quality of a mother who has to tell her child something that is going to change how the child sees herself.I take a sit across from her.Dominic has taken Lucia to the park so the apartment can hold this conversation properly.The phone rings twice.Paz answers with the energy of someone who has been up for hours doing something purposeful. I can hear the New Mexico morning in her voice. The wide sky of it."Mami," she says. "I'm literally at Mira Seca right now, the county inspector came early and we did a full survey of the foundation perimeter and there's more structural integrity than we thought, which means we can....""Paz," Elena interrupted .She stops.She has known her mother long enough to read a single word."What is it?" she says."Are you sitting down?" Elena says.A pause. "I'm sitting on a foundation stone," she says. "Is that sym
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred and Three: Rome
I call Pren.He answers in two rings."What kind of records?" I say."I don't have the full picture yet," he says. "The Rome Conclave operates differently from Edinburgh or Chicago. They have a formal archivist, a position that has existed since the fifteenth century, and she contacted me directly yesterday." He pauses. "Her name is Sister Benedetta. She's been the archivist for thirty-one years.""A nun?" I say."The Rome Conclave has always had a relationship with certain religious orders," he says. "It's a complicated history that goes back centuries. Sister Benedetta was appointed archivist because she has the specific ability to read what's in the archive accurately." He pauses. "Her words, not mine."I look at Dominic across the table.He is listening."She has the ability," I say."She said, specifically, that she has been waiting for the founding line to become visible," Pren says. "That the Chicago session was the signal she was waiting for." He pauses. "She says the records
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred and Two: Elena's Box
I call her immediately.She answers before the first ring finishes, which means she was holding the phone, which means she has been sitting with whatever is in that box and waiting for me to call and probably unable to do anything else in the interim."Tell me," I say."I can't do this on the phone," she says. "I need to show you.""You said you're coming next month," I say."I'm coming next week," she says. "I changed the flight when I found it.""What is it, Elena?"A pause.Like she's deciding how much to give over the phone versus in person."It's from your mother," she says.I go completely still."The box was my mother's," she says. "She gave it to me before she died. She told me to keep it until someone asked for it. She said I'd know when." A pause. "I never opened it because I thought I was the wrong someone. I thought there was a specific person it was meant for and I wasn't them.""Me," I say."I think so," she says. "Yes.""What made you open it now?" I say."Lucia saying
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred and One: The Fourth Word
August.Lucia is six months old and the fourth word arrives on a Wednesday.Not dramatically. She is in the bouncy seat in the kitchen watching me make breakfast while slowly sulking on her milk bottle. She says it twice with the certainty of someone who has been working toward something and has decided today is the day. "More." I heard her say and I became still for just a nanosecond. I thought I might have misheard. It's just some more of her intelligible words.NI turn from the stove and looked at her with a smile She looks back at me."More." She repeated throwing a fit with her milk bottle in hand while sucking on a thumb. My eyebrows shot up in surprise. How did she know just the right wordI look at her for a moment and my smile widened as I approached her.Then I say: "More of what?"She makes the sound that means she approves of the question.I crouch to her level, taking aside a strand of her that seem to be stuck from sweat just so close to her eyes."More of this?" I say
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred: What Stays
July arrives with the warmth and chill of a Chicago July that doesn't apologize for itself. The city at its most itself, outdoor everything and the lake and people moving through the heat with the determined enjoyment of people who endured five months of cold and are going to make the most of every degree above seventy.Lucia is five months old and she finally has the third word now.It arrived on a Tuesday morning and it was, as Dominic predicted, something she decided mattered."Li."Her version of her name.The first time she said it I was at the kitchen window watering the herbs and she said it from the bouncy seat with the specific satisfaction of someone who has been working toward something and has arrived.I turned around.She looked at me."Li."I looked at her for a moment.Then I said: "Yes. That's you."She said it again bouncing on the seat in joy. Smiling so wide I could see her toothless gum."Li."Three times. How establishing.Dominic came in from the hallway and she
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Sixty-Seven: The Petition and the Person Behind It
I put Lucia's photograph back in the folder, close the folder and finish my decaf.These are three small deliberate acts that I perform with the specific intention of not letting the phone call turn the morning into something it doesn't have to be. The scan happened. Lucia is confirmed and real and
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Sixty-Six: Twenty Weeks
Thursday comes with the particular energy of a day that contains something you've been waiting for.I wake at six without an alarm. I shower and dress and eat the breakfast I make every morning now, eggs and toast and the decaf that I have stopped resenting quite as much as I did in the first trime
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Sixty-Five: What Twenty Minutes Looks Like
He brings Thai food.Not from somewhere expensive. From the place on Milwaukee Avenue that has been there since before I moved to the neighborhood and has the quality of food that prioritizes getting it right over getting it noticed. Green curry. Pad see ew. Spring rolls that are always slightly to
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Sixty-Four: The Space Between Settled and New
November moves differently than October did.October was emergency rooms and midnight calls and sessions that changed the shape of things. November is something else. It has the quality of a month that knows it follows something enormous and has decided not to compete with it. Just to be the month
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