The room got quiet because that was the thing they were finally starting to understand about me. I did not care about panic, and I did not care about what couldn’t be done. I also did not care about all the reasons something failed if the only thing sitting in front of me was failure itself. I learned that from El Blanca.
“If there’s military, buy them,” I ordered. “If they can’t be bought, reroute. If the driver can’t handle pressure, replace him. If there’s a leak, close it. Why are any of you coming in here telling me about problems you were paid to solve?” I couldn’t understand this and I realized that the job wasn’t even hard, you just had to use common sense. I’d heard my uncle enough although he never taught me this side of the business, he knew that I was listening.
One of the men shifted in his seat and another one looked down at the papers in front of him.Good,I thought to myself, because I needed them to feel uncomfortable, I needed them to remember that I was not sitting in my uncle’s chair for decoration. By the time the meeting ended, I had changed two routes, replaced one handler, cut one man’s percentage down to almost nothing, and told the port manager if he embarrassed me again I’d have him replaced by somebody younger and hungrier before breakfast and the best part, they believed me too. I could tell in the way their faces got uncomfortable when I spoke and in the way their eyes kept dropping before they lifted back to mine.
By the time they finally left the room, my back hurt, my head was pounding, and my coffee had gotten cold long ago. I stoodthere by the table for a second, with both palms flat on the counter and let myself breathe. The house around me was quiet except for the distant noise of staff moving through the kitchen and the hum of the air conditioning. It was one of the larger compounds, not the main estate, but one of the safer ones. It had tall walls, it was gated, tucked away enough that people had to really mean it to get there. There were guards outside, drivers in the front, and cameras on every corner. Everybody moved when I told them to and everybody answered when I called but somehow, it still felt lonely.
I stepped away from the table and walked out into the hall. My heels clicked against the marble, and one of the house girls straightened up the second she saw me.
“Señora, would you like something to eat?”
“No.” I told her.
“You haven’t eaten. La Reina.”
I stopped walking and looked at her, but I didn’t have anything to say.
She immediately looked down. “Lo siento.”
I exhaled softly. “Just tea.”
“Sí.”
She hurried off to retrieve it . That was another thing power gave you. People started noticing your moods before you said them out loud. They watched what you ate or how much you slept, or how often you looked at your phone and if you were a woman, they noticed even more. They wanted to know if your sadness made you weak or if your loneliness made you reckless or even if your beauty made you foolish. I gave them as little as possible. At least in public. In private? That was where the problem started.
My phone had become the center of my day, and I hated that about myself. I hated it enough that I kept it a secret from everyone in the house, because if Luciana or any of the olderwomen around me ever figured out why I had started dressing with more care again, why I had begun wearing perfume even to breakfast, why I checked my phone more often than my security reports, they would know exactly what kind of fool I was being. Or rather, what kind of fool I wanted to be. Dom had been calling me and not every day like a lovesick man with too much time and too little self-control. That wasn’t his style, but it was enough that I started expecting it to the point I started feeling the absence of it when two days passed without his voice. It was enough that when I heard his name now, everything in me reacted before I could stop it. At first I told myself it was nothing. Then I started replaying the things he said after we hung up. Always concerned about if I’m eating or sleeping or if I’m handling things well or if I needed any advice.
He was never warm and never sweet, and he surely was never the type of man to say something that could be read as soft if he could help it. But he was checking on me, and the part of me that had always wanted more from him kept turning that into something bigger and I knew how it sounded, but still, I couldn’t help it because what if he was coming around? What if time had done what force never could? What if Carmen only held his attention now because she was carrying his baby and because duty made him stay where comfort had already started to fade? That thought was ugly, I knew it, but it still ran across my mind, like a warm and poisonous venom every time he called.
By the time I made it to my room, the tea had been placed on the little table by the window, and my second phone was exactly where I left it. Not the main one people called me on for business but the private one. The one no one in the house knew mattered more to me than it should. I picked it up before I even sat down and there were no new messages. My stomach dropped anyway, and I hated myself for that too.
I slowly crossed the room, stopping in front of the mirror long enough to take my earrings off and place them onto the vanity. My room overlooked the back gardens and one of the smaller pools, and the sunset was just beginning to turn the sky colors. The whole room glowed in that color, through the silk curtains. From the furniture, and the black marble fireplace, everything looked expensive and lonely.
I set my uncle’s ring on the vanity, then immediately picked it back up and slid it on again. I hated how naked I felt without it. A knock came at the door, and before I could answer, Luciana stepped in with a stack of reports in one hand and a look on her face that told me she had already clocked my mood from down the hall.
“You were hard on them today La Reina,” she said, setting the papers on the table.
“They were stupid today.” I huffed rolling my eyes.
She giggled. “That too.” She looked at me in the mirror while I took a pin out of my hair and let the straight strands fall down my back. “You’ve been different lately,” she said.
I kept my eyes on my own reflection. “Different how?”
“Happier mamacita.” She was standing right behind me reading me. That made me glance over at her and she caught it. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said with the small smile. “I have eyes.”
I turned away from the mirror and walked to the seating area by the window, lifting the tea and taking a slow sip. It had honey in it, and a little too much of it. I set the cup back down and looked out toward the gardens.
“You imagine things.” I told her.
“I don’t.” I could feel her watching me. That was the thing about Luciana. She didn’t waste words, and she didn’t let things go once she thought she was on to something.
“You’ve been dressing differently,” she said.
“I always dress well.”
“You’ve been checking your phone every ten minutes.”
“I have business.” I shot back trying not to sound to defensive.