Forgot the men.
Forgot the debt.
There was only the photograph.
Carlos's hand rested loosely near hers on the table, close enough that she could almost remember the warmth of it. She remembered the way he tilted his head when he listened, the patient half-smile he gave her whenever she started talking too fast because she was nervous.
He had always looked at her like she was something fragile he wanted to protect.
Her chest heavily tightened.
Why did this man have that picture?
Where had it come from?
And then the answer came to her.
Cold.
Immediate.
He was going to use Carlos.
Her gaze snapped back to Santiago.
"Why do you have that picture?"
The question came out sharp.
Her fingers tightened around the papers in her hand.
"If this is supposed to scare me...."
Her voice faltered for half a second, but she forced it steady again.
"Carlos has nothing to do with this."
She took a small step forward without realizing she had moved.
"You said the debt belongs to my father and my brother. Not to me. Carlos was never involved in any of it."
Her pulse was suddenly loud in her ears.
"He doesn't even know the people my father owes."
Her throat tightened.
"If you think threatening him is going to make me cooperate faster, you're wasting your time."
Her chin lifted slightly.
"He had done nothing."
The room stayed silent.
Santiago did not interrupt her.
That silence made her chest tighten even more.
"He worked," she continued. "He kept to himself. He only came to the town because of me."
The next words slipped out before she could stop them.
"We were supposed to get married today."
Her voice softened despite herself.
"I waited for him at the registry office for two hours."
Her eyes dropped briefly to the photograph again.
"He's probably still trying to figure out how to explain why he didn't make it."
She lifted her gaze again.
"But whatever someone has told you, Carlos had nothing to do with this."
The fire shifted softly in the grate.
Santiago watched her for a long moment.
Then he said, very calmly,
"Carlos is dead."
"Carlos is dead?"
"How's that even possible?"
For a second Daniella did not understand the words.
They reached her ears.
But they did not make sense.
Her mind rejected them the way the body rejects pain that arrives too suddenly.
"No."
The word slipped out automatically.
Small.
Barely making a sound.
Her head shook once.
Then again in disbelief.
"No."
Her eyes dropped to the photograph again as if it might prove him wrong. Carlos was still there, leaning toward her across the table, the corner of his mouth lifted the way it always did when she said something that amused him.
Alive.
Warm.
Real.
Her chest tightened painfully.
"That's not possible."
Her voice sounded strange to her own ears.
Flat and distant.
"We were supposed to get married today."
The words felt fragile as they left her mouth, like something that might break if she said them too loudly.
"I waited for him at the registry office."
Her fingers curled slightly against her palm.
"For two hours."
She remembered the wooden bench.
The quiet murmur of other couples waiting for their turn.
The clerk calling numbers.
Her phone pressed against her ear while the automated voice repeated that the number she was calling was unavailable.
"He just didn't come."
Her throat tightened.
"He wouldn't...."
The sentence died halfway out.
She thought of, Carlos standing in her doorway with a bag of oranges because he said pregnant women needed fruit.
Carlos crouched on her kitchen floor fixing the cabinet hinge that had been loose for months.
Carlos tracing a circle around a date on the calendar with a pen.
October tenth.
We'll do it then. Civil ceremony first.
I'll be there before you.
Her breath hitched.
Her vision blurred for a moment.
"No."
She looked back at Santiago.
There was something desperate in her eyes now.
"You're wrong."