Her throat works, but she makes herself hold your gaze. “No. I let you walk away thinking I had betrayed you in the worst possible way because by then, I believed maybe I had.”
The sentence is so tangled it almost offends you. “What does that even mean?”
She gestures toward the kitchen table. “Sit down. Please. If you leave now, you’ll leave with the wrong story. Again.”
That word again lands like a stone between you.
You don’t want to sit. You want to demand DNA tests, dates, records, whatever evidence exists in the wreckage she’s now opened. But anger has always been easiest when it faces a simple villain, and Sofía no longer looks simple. She looks like someone who has been waiting years for a verdict. You pull out a chair and sit anyway, every muscle tense.
She remains standing for a moment, as if she doesn’t think she has earned the right to do this comfortably. Then she lowers herself into the chair across from you and clasps her hands on the table. You notice there’s no ring on her finger. You hate yourself for noticing.
“Diego Navarro started pursuing the agency long before he started pursuing me,” she says. “He wanted contracts, political access, local influence. He liked owning things. Businesses, people, favors. At first he was just a client. Then he became a problem.”
You say nothing.
“He flirted. I ignored it. He offered gifts. I sent them back. He kept showing up at events, meetings, anywhere he knew I’d be. When I told my boss, she laughed and said that’s what powerful men do when they’re interested. She told me to be smart about it.”
You lean back, arms crossed. “And were you?”
