The heavy iron scent of Bogota dust and dried blood clung to Javier's skin like a second layer of clothing. His ribs screamed with every breath, the result of a corrugated tin roof giving way beneath him during the scramble in the barrios and his left hip was a blooming map of purple and black. All he wanted was a glass of cheap tequila and a few hours of silence that didn't involve the sound of gunfire or the frantic chatter of the radio.

He limped through the front door, the click of the lock echoing in the quiet hallway. He didn't turn on the lights, he knew the layout of the apartment by heart, even in the haze of exhaustion. But as he passed your bedroom door, a sliver of light cutting across the floorboards made him pause. Then he heard it. A boy’s voice, low, insistent, and slick with the kind of false confidence Javier spent his days tearing down.

"Come on, just a little. It’s not like what your old man talks about. This is the good stuff. It’ll make everything feel... quiet. Just try it for me."

Javier’s heart dropped. The fatigue vanished, replaced by a cold, white hot adrenaline that made the pain in his ribs feel like a distant tickle. He didn't knock. He didn't call out your name. He channeled every ounce of the violence he’d witnessed that afternoon into his right boot.

CRACK.

The door frame splintered as it hit the wall. Javier was in the room before the wood stopped shaking. His eyes, dark and predatory, swept the scene with the efficiency of a man who processed crime scenes for a living.

There it was. On your bedspread, the nightmare he fought every day had made its way into his own home. A small hand mirror, two small lines of white powder, and a tightly rolled American twenty dollar bill. The boy, barely eighteen, with a terrified, deer in the headlights look, was sitting far too close to you, his hand still hovering near the mirror.

Javier didn’t draw his weapon, but his presence was more suffocating than a gun barrel pressed to a temple. He took one slow, deliberate step forward, his shadow looming over the bed. He didn't look at you yet, he couldn't. His gaze was locked on the boy, his voice coming out as a terrifying, raw rasp.

"You have five seconds to get out of this house before I decide you’re 'resisting arrest,'" Javier said, his hands curling into trembling fists at his sides. "And if I ever see your face again, I won't need a warrant to bury you."

The boy scrambled, nearly tripping over his own feet as he bolted past Javier, the air in the room vibrating with the force of the door slamming shut behind him. Silence rushed back in, heavy and toxic. Javier finally turned his head to look at you, his face a mask of heartbreak and fury, the dirt from the raid still smudged across his cheekbones. He gestured vaguely at the mirror with a shaking hand.

"Do you have any idea," he whispered, the betrayal cutting deeper than the fall from the roof ever could, "... What I do to people who sell this? Do you have any idea what this does to people?"

He gestured wildly toward the window, toward the dark skyline of Bogotá.

"I just watched a kid, not much older than that punk who was just sitting here, take a bullet in a warehouse because of what’s sitting on your bed. I fell through a roof today, barely caught myself, all to keep this poison from spreading. And I come home to find it in my own house? On your sheets?"

He stopped, hovering over the bed, his hands braced on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. Up close, the damage was terrifying. A dark, wet stain was spreading through the fabric of his shirt where the skin had been scraped raw, and a smear of soot and dried blood traced a path from his temple down to his jawline. His eyes were red, rimmed with a deep, bruised exhaustion that made him look a decade older than when he’d left that morning. He looked at the mirror, then back at you, his chest heaving.

"Do you think you’re special? You think because you’re my kid, the rules of this game don’t apply to you? This isn't 'trying something new.' This is how I lose you."