You hate how weak that sounds on him.
Hate even more that he still tries to make it sound like concern instead of fear. For six months he has been walking through your house like a man measuring curtains before the funeral. He has sat in your office, spoken over your head, rewritten your routines, instructed staff, and pushed papers onto your desk while believing your body had become a doorway only he could walk through.
Now the doorway speaks back.
“Put,” you say again, slower this time, the word dragging itself out through pain, “her… down.”
Mauricio drops Sofía so quickly Carmen nearly misses the catch.
The little girl tumbles into her mother’s arms sobbing, tiny fingers digging into the fabric of Carmen’s uniform like she’s trying to climb back inside safety itself. Carmen curls around her on the floor, shaking. You cannot move fast enough to help them, and the helplessness hits you so hard it almost makes you black out.
It also makes you furious in a way you haven’t felt in two years.
Real fury. Not the brittle kind that wrote thirty-seven rules and demanded silence because silence was easier than humiliation. Not the cold, tyrannical kind that drove nurses away and turned your office into a mausoleum. This is something cleaner, hotter, more dangerous. The kind that reminds a man what he used to do before his body betrayed him and everyone around him started speaking as if he were already gone.
The older of the two lawyers clears his throat first.
“Señor Garza,” he says cautiously, “if you are able to communicate—”
“I said,” you rasp, “get out.”
The lawyer stops.
Mauricio tries to recover. He is good at that, you’ll give him that. Your late sister’s boy always had a talent for finding the smoothest lie in the room and stepping into it before anyone else noticed what he was covering. He straightens his jacket, smooths his cuffs, and gives a nervous little laugh.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” he says. “The child ran in here, startled you, and Carmen overreacted—”
