The infant stirred. Tiny hands moved in restless little motions, fingers opening and closing at nothing. Eyes still too new for the world blinked toward the light.
The child could not have been more than a month old.
And Santiago, who claimed to hate children, did not move. Did not speak.
He only stood there looking at the baby. Studying it.
As though trying to understand something.
Or perhaps trying to understand himself.
Gabriel leaned against the doorframe and watched in open disbelief. He had seen Santiago stare down armed men without blinking, negotiate ruin with the calm of a man discussing the weather, and send people trembling from a room with a single sentence. But this, this quiet stillness over a crib, was unfamiliar, almost unnerving.
For a long moment neither brother spoke. Only the faint mechanical hum of the room's air system, the soft breathing of Gabriel's sleeping wife, and the tiny rustle of the infant moving beneath the blanket filled the silence.
