Page 171 of The Final Cut

Mostly it’s just too much male certainty gathered around one small, angry, hurting woman.

I wanted to mock it on sight, and I did, because old habits are easier than taking a breath and recognizing it for what it is.

They’re keeping her alive.

They also listen to her far more than I expected they would.

That part is unsettling. I’m not used to authority that respects those it holds in its hand.

Isabel listened only when she had already decided which answer she wanted to punish or approve. Men listened when they wanted weakness. Women listened when they were afraid another girl’s mistake might spill their own blood.

Nash Blackwood listened like my answer could change the map.

Deacon told me I should become La Rosa. Not lead it. Not survive it.

Become it.

The words have been moving under my skin since the meeting ended.

I don’t want La Rosa.

I don’t want its ledgers or its houses or its soldiers with rosary ink beneath their sleeves. I do not want the women who lower their eyes because they have learned submission looks safer than defiance. I do not want the ceremonial rooms, the private chapels, the old prayers Isabel twists until faith sounds like a threat. I don’t want the chair where she sits with her hands folded while other people bleed.

I have spent fifteen years learning every corner of her world so I could survive it. Now they want me to hold it. Worse, they may be right.

That is the part I cannot wrap my head around.

A cartel does not die because its queen does. It sheds her, mourns her in public, then feeds whatever reaches the crown fastest. Men like Octavio. Priests with clean cuffs. Accountants with girls in the back of cars. Cousins who smiled at me over dinner while calculating whether I would be easier to control married or grieving.

If Isabel falls and no one takes the room, the room will take someone.

Possibly Reva.

Probably me.

Maybe both of us.

I look down at the names again.

Teresa. Ana Luisa. Celeste.

Women Isabel thinks she owns because she has never understood the difference between obedience and patience.

The pen rests beside the paper. I pick it up and write a fourth name.

Marisol.

My hand stops after the last letter.

Mother. The word sits in me like a bruise touched too soon.

I’ve called her that for years because Isabel allowed it—Mother, not Mom or Mama. Because Mother earned the title every day in ways Reva will not know how to forgive yet. Because she stood between me and worse when she could and paid when she couldn’t. Because sometimes the only softness in that house was the brush of her hand over my hair after a correction, brief enough that no camera could call it comfort.

Reva met her last night.

Reva’s face when she came back from the hospital told me enough. White around the mouth. Eyes too bright. Hurt turned sharp because anger was the only thing still standing.

I knew this would happen. I just didn’t know it would happen now.