Elena Vasquez

8:17 a.m. – The Hamptons Estate

The quiet that followed the FBI’s departure was the kind that presses against your eardrums, thick and unnatural. I stood over the coffee tray, fingers curled around a mug gone cold, watching the steam die. Victor’s blood had already browned on the marble, a comma of violence punctuation-marking the end of a sentence I no longer believed. Mamá’s breathing was soft under the throw blanket. Marco had closed his laptop for the first time in ...