Chapter 57

Alejandro’s POV

Candy Reeves laughed at everything.

Not a real laugh, the kind that caught you off guard and made you want to know what caused it, but the performed kind. Bright and perfectly timed, landing at exactly the right moments in conversation like she’d rehearsed it somewhere private before bringing it out for company.

She’d been in my house for three days and I was already tired in a way that sleep couldn’t fix.

My father had arranged it while I wasn’t paying attention, the way he arranged most things he knew I’d refuse if given the option.

Her bags had simply appeared in the guest room on Tuesday morning and when I’d called him about it he’d let it ring out twice before picking up and saying “give it a week” with the tone of a man who considered the matter already settled.

I had not given it a week.

I had given it approximately seventy two hours of Candy appearing in my kitchen in silk robes, touching things that weren’t hers, asking my housekeeper to rearrange the living room furniture, and looking at me across every surface in this house with a patient, deliberate smile that made my eyes twitch.

“You’re not eating,” she observed from across the breakfast table Thursday morning, nodding toward my untouched plate.

“I’m aware,” I replied without looking up from my phone.

“Maria made it fresh,” she continued, like that was the issue.

I set my phone down and looked at her. She was pretty in an obvious way, the kind of pretty that came with money and maintenance and the knowledge that people were always looking.

She held my gaze without flinching, which told me she’d been briefed on me and had decided she could handle it.

She was wrong, but I hadn’t told her that yet.

“I’m not hungry, Candy,” I replied flatly.

“You should eat something before—”

“I said I’m not hungry.”

She pressed her lips together briefly, smoothed her robe, and reached for her coffee with the composure of someone adding a data point to a longer strategy.

I pushed back from the table and left.

The problem with the house was that it still smelled like her.

Not literally, or maybe literally, I didn’t know anymore. All I knew was that every room I walked into had some corner that reminded me of Mira and no amount of Candy’s perfume filling the hallways was doing anything useful about that.

The kitchen especially. That specific spot near the counter where she used to stand with a mug she held with both hands like she was cold even when she wasn’t.

I needed to get out so I went to where I always found solace before she came along.

Marlo found me at the bar at eleven thirty which meant Danny had called him, which meant I’d been here long enough that Danny had gotten worried, which meant the evening had gotten away from me somewhere between the third and fourth drink.

“You look terrible,” Marlo announced, dropping onto the stool beside me.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“Where’s your security?”

“Told them to wait outside.”

“Why.”

“Because I wanted to drink in peace and Marcus judges me with his eyes.”

Marlo signaled the bartender, ordered something, then turned to look at me with the particular expression he wore when he was deciding how honest to be.

“She really got to you,” he said.

“Don’t,” I warned.

“I’m just saying.”

“Well stop just saying and drink your drink.”

He was quiet for a moment. Across the bar, some guy in a football jersey was getting progressively louder with his friends, the specific escalating volume of someone who had confused drunk confidence with actual confidence.

“Is Candy that bad?” Marlo asked.

“She rearranged my living room furniture,” I replied.

He winced. “First three days?”

“First three days man.”

He picked up his glass. “Yeah okay that’s bad.”

I turned back to mine.

The thing about drinking when you are actually angry rather than just bored was that it didn’t do what you needed it to. It just moved the anger around, shifted it from one room to another without actually clearing it out.

I was angry at my father for the announcement,  the folder and thirty years of being exactly who he was. I was angry at Mira for the secrets she was still carrying around like I hadn’t earned the right to know them by now.

Mostly I was angry at myself because somewhere under all of it was the folder my father had put in front of me, the photographs and the records and the police report she’d filed and withdrawn, and every time I thought about what those dates meant, what she would have been living through at that age and how completely alone she’d been inside it, the anger shifted into something that felt uncomfortably close to grief.

“Oi.” The voice came from my left.

It was Football Jersey guy. Up close he was bigger than he’d looked from across the room, the kind of big that came from the gym rather than genetics, and he was looking at me with the expression of someone who had recognized me from somewhere.

“Montenegro, right?” he slurred. “I heard your ex girlfriend was a stripper.”

The bar got a little quieter around us.

“Walk away,” I replied without turning fully toward him.

“Nah, I just want to know,” he continued, louder now, playing to his friends, “what it’s like knowing she’s been on every pole in the city before she got to you.”

I was off the stool before I’d decided to be.

The next thirty seconds were not my finest moment.

Marlo got between us fast, faster than I expected, and Danny materialized from somewhere behind me and grabbed my arm with both hands, pulling me back while the guy’s friends pulled him, and the bartender was already talking loudly about calling someone and the whole thing dissolved into the particular chaos of a fight that almost happened.

“Outside,” Danny said firmly into my ear. “Right now, Dro. Outside.”

I let them move me.

The night air hit cold and sharp. I stood on the pavement with my hands at my sides, breathing through my nose, while Marlo talked us out of whatever the bartender had been threatening through the door behind us.

Danny stood in front of me with his arms crossed, not angry, just watching.

“You done?” he asked.

“Yes,” I muttered.

“Good.”

Marlo reappeared, rolling his shoulders out. “Nobody’s calling anyone. Let’s go.”

The drive back was quiet. I sat in the back and stared out the window letting the city move past in streaks of light while something settled in my chest that felt like a decision forming.

The folder.

My father had compiled it with the intention of using it as a wall between Mira and me, but all it had actually done was show me how little I knew about the person I was in love with, and how much of what I didn’t know was things she’d survived rather than things she’d chosen.

I wanted the full picture.

Not my father’s version with its deliberate framing and its careful selections. The real one. Every piece of it.

“Marlo,” I said quietly.

He looked back from the front seat.

“I need a contact,” I told him. “Someone thorough. Someone who can find things that don’t want to be found.”

He studied me for a second. “How deep are we talking?”

I looked back out the window.

“All the way,” I replied.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​