Chapter 8.

The vehicle pulls away from the house before I've finished watching Daniel disappear from the window.

"This is where it stops being easy," Isa says, not turning from the front seat. "Elena exists on paper now, banking, leases, a digital footprint that'll survive anyone who goes looking. Cash reserves. A burner for anything that can't wait." A pause. "Direct contact with us stops today. You'll operate alone.”

"Alone," I repeat, and the word tastes exactly like it did the first time she said it.

The car stops outside a high-rise I don't recognize. Isa doesn't get out. She just holds a set of keys back over the seat, apartment, car, both stamped with a fob I don't recognize yet.

"Aren't you coming up?" I ask.

"No." She doesn't explain further, and I've learned not to ask twice. "Everything you need is inside."

Jake climbs out with me, pulls me into a quick, hard hug before I can protest. "Stay safe," he murmurs against my ear, low enough that Isa won't hear it. "I mean it."

I take the keys, and the door shuts behind me before I've even reached the curb.

…….

The apartment is beautiful in the specific way of something built for a person who doesn't exist.

Marble counters. A skyline view. Closets already full of Elena's clothes in Elena's sizes, shoes lined up like a woman who's lived here for years instead of a woman who will sleep here for the first time tonight.

Everything I need. Nothing that's mine.

The burner phone waits on the counter, screen already lit with one message from Isa.

“Rafael is your opening. Use dinner to get closer to the family, not just the man. Don't waste it.”

I read it twice before I put the phone down.

I dig Daniel's handkerchief out of my bag before I've even set down the rest of my things, and press it to my face without letting myself think about it first.

His cologne, faint, familiar, exactly enough to make my throat tighten.

Then it hits me, the wrongness of it, standing in an apartment built for another man's attention while I'm holding onto the scent of the one I actually love. I fold it carefully and tuck it into the nightstand drawer, out of sight, because some things don't survive being looked at too long.

My phone buzzes. Rafael.

Rafael's text lands first: "What's the address to your place, mi amor?" Rafael texts.

I smirk at the screen, thumbs already moving. "You could've had that an hour ago if you wanted it badly enough." I add. "We both know that.”

"True," he replies. "But Elena, I wanted to do this one the right way."

I send it over: "214 Brickell Bay Dr, Miami. Try to earn it twice."

"Marcus will be there at eight," he writes. "Don't be late. I don't like waiting."

"You'll survive."

"Maybe." A pause. "I've been told patience isn't one of my virtues, Cariño. Tonight's testing that theory.”

I set the phone down and let myself breathe for the first time since the car door shut on Selene Vasquez's old life.

I'm still unpacking when my phone rings again, not Rafael this time. A number I know by heart even though I've never saved it.

Mamá

I let it ring twice before I answer. "Hey."

"Mi hija." Her voice cracks trying to sound light. "I've called so many times, I wasn't sure you'd ever pick up again.”

"I've been busy."

"You're always busy." A pause, the kind that used to mean something different before it started meaning everything. "You didn't call on my birthday, Selene."

"I sent the money, Mama.”

"I don't want the money." Her voice breaks fully this time. "I want my daughter. Do you know how long it's been since you let me into anything? I don't even know what city you're in."

"You know why."

"I know you blame me." Her voice is quieter now, worn thin. "I know what happened in that house. I've never stopped knowing it."

"Then why are you still in it?"

Silence stretches long enough that I think the call dropped.

"Because I don't have anywhere else," she finally says, and something in me that's spent years being furious at her nearly breaks at how small she sounds saying it.

"You could have left. I begged you to leave. I was sixteen, Mama, and I begged."

"I know."

"You picked him. Every single time, you picked him." My voice shakes despite everything I've trained it not to do. "And I ran because staying meant something worse was going to happen to me, and you weren't going to stop it."

"Selene—"

"You chose a man over your own daughter mama," I say, and it comes out uglier than I mean it to, "isn't that what you're going to tell everyone? That I abandoned you? You abandoned me first."

She's crying now, and some old, stubborn piece of me wants to hang up before I start crying too.

"I love you," she says. "Even if I don't deserve to say that anymore."

"I know." My voice finally breaks. "I still send the money because some part of me still hopes you'll use it to leave him. I don't know why I keep hoping that."

"Selene—"

"I have to go." I hang up before she can answer, because there's nothing left to say that won't cost more than I have left to give tonight.

I sit on the edge of the bed a long moment, then push my skirt up just enough to see it, the scar, raised and pale along my thigh, the one that marks the exact night everything ended and began at once. The night I ran. The night that led me into six months I don't let myself remember in full. The night Isa found me half-conscious in a warehouse and asked if I wanted to disappear, or become someone who never had to feel powerless again.

I chose the second one. I've never let myself regret it.

I press my palm to the scar and let myself cry, the kind of crying that comes without warning and doesn't ask permission first.

The doorbell rings. I wipe my face fast, check the peephole out of habit before I open it—and go completely still.