You’re sitting across from Alejandro in a dim room, papers spread out between you, maps and photographs curling at the edges. He’s speaking into a burner phone, low and fast, in Spanish. His voice is smooth, threaded with a calm authority that doesn’t waver once. You don’t catch every word, but you don’t need to. It’s the cadence—the way the language rolls off his tongue like a river finding its way through stone.

There’s a slight furrow between his brows, a flicker of something fierce in his eyes. You lean back without meaning to, just…listening. It feels like something intimate, something you weren’t meant to witness but can’t tear yourself away from.

When he hangs up, Alejandro catches your gaze for a beat longer than necessary