Page 45 of Knight
I think about Marisol screaming in her sleep. The sound of it — raw, animal, the kind of scream that lives in a child's body like a tenant who refuses to be evicted no matter how many times you change the locks.
I think about Tomás on a bathroom floor. The school nurse's voice on the phone — calm, professional, the practiced tone of someone who has made this call before.Your brother had an episode. We think it was a panic attack. Do you have insurance?
Do you have insurance.
Four words that took the breath out of me harder than any fist ever could.
I know Romeo is standing in my kitchen because he's cornered. I know I'm the exit, the loophole, the legal technicality that saves his empire from a war his dead father started. I know he wrapped need in strategy and handed it to me hoping I wouldn't notice the difference.
I noticed.
I say yes anyway.
Because the math works. For the first time in two years, the math finally, brutally, completely works.
"Yes."
The Thing She Will Not Name
He exhales like a man who's been holding his breath since the garage.
His shoulders drop. His eyes close for half a second and I watch the relief move through his body like a wave that starts in his chest and pushes outward until his hands stop trembling and his breathing finds a rhythm that sounds almost human again.
He expected that to be the hardest part.
He's wrong.
The hardest part is happening inside me right now, behind the word I just gave him, in the space between what I said and what I meant.
I said yes because of the math. That is true. Every number I've been drowning in for two years just found a shore and Iwould be a fool — a dangerous, irresponsible fool — to swim past it because the shore belongs to a man with blood on his name. My siblings come first. They have always come first. The day my mother walked out I made a decision in the three seconds between Tomás asking where she went and me opening my mouth to answer, and that decision has governed every choice I've made since.
Their safety is the altar I pray at. The only church I've ever trusted.
Romeo is offering me that safety backed by something stronger than my own two hands. He's offering it backed by a surname and a fortune and a family of armed men who kill to protect their blood. I said yes to that. I meant it. I would say it again in a heartbeat because I am done — bone-deep, soul-tired done — being the only wall between my siblings and a world that has never once made it easy.
But.
There is a reason my pulse is hammering against my throat right now that has nothing to do with safety and nothing to do with math.
My mother used to sayI love youevery night. She'd stand in the doorway of the room Marisol and I shared and she'd blow a kiss with her fingertips and whisper those three words like a lullaby. She said them the night before she disappeared. Same doorway. Same whispered kiss. Same words that meant nothing because she was already packed — I found the suitcase dent in her closet carpet the next morning while Tomás cried in the kitchen and Marisol stared at the empty bed like she could will our mother back into it.
Love was never the currency that ran out in my life.
Love was everywhere. Social workers said it. Teachers said it. Birthday cards from a foster system that never showed up saidit. Love was cheap. Love was the word people used right before they left.
Safety was the thing I could never afford. Safety was the thing that cost real money, real sacrifice, real hours on a stage letting strangers look at my body so my brother could eat dinner.
Romeo is offering safety. I said yes to safety.
The thing I will not say — the thing I hold behind my teeth where he can't reach it — is that somewhere between a back office and a cracked joystick controller and a penthouse that smelled like nothing until I was in it, I stopped wanting the arrangement.
I started wanting him.
And that want is the most dangerous thing in this kitchen. More dangerous than the Marchese. More dangerous than the war. Because I know what happens when you love someone in a world like his.
You lose them. Or they lose you.
I keep my mouth shut and let him think the math was enough.
