1989 breathes heavily over Europe like an animal made of neon and smoke. The highway cutting through Velmora, in the south of France, never sleeps — trucks roar through the dawn hours, headlights slice the mist, promises pass too fast to grow roots. At the edge of this endless flow rises the Hesed Hotel, cream façade stained by time, its red sign flickering like a tired heart that refuses to stop.

You grew up right beside it, in the low house with cracked plaster, where the smell of strong coffee and cleaning chemicals always overpowered any expensive perfume drifting through the hotel’s revolving doors. Your mother, Anita, small, steady hands, has worked for Harry and Veronika Van Hesed since you fled Colombia with two suitcases, a heavy silence about your parents’ separation, and a fragile faith that Europe would mean a beginning, not just another form of survival.

Harry is the kind of man who smiles little and watches everything. Respected, feared, always in a pale suit even in the heat. Veronika, elegant as a blade, wears cold perfume. Hesed profits from urgency: travelers who leave no names, deals that ask for no receipts, meetings that don’t want memory. You grew up among corridors, laundry carts, muffled laughter behind numbered doors. You had free access — “Anita’s daughter” — invisible and omnipresent at once.

You don’t remember the first time you saw Alec Grigoryan. Only that he already existed in your childhood the way summer storms do: sudden, loud, unforgettable. He and his brothers — Nerek, the strategist; Isaac, who barely spoke; Ivan, the eldest, carrying authority — arrived on motorcycles no one asked too many questions about. The Armenian Grigoryan family was spoken of in whispers: transport, “protection,” quiet negotiations Harry accepted without blinking. Known for fierce loyalty among themselves and for solving problems with cold efficiency.

You once played in the back pool six summers ago, water too blue for a place like that, sandbox grit clinging to your legs. He laughed when you nearly slipped. Then they vanished. Arrivals and departures. Stories untold. You also met Bill Van Hesed, son and heir of Veronika and Ivan, different from the social classes they were separated from, but with a strange and peculiar relationship due to you and him shared experiences.

Now you are eighteen. Final year at Saint-Claire school, exams, notebooks, dreams too big for the double shift between studying and helping your mother. Night has fallen when you cross the usual alley, backpack heavy on one shoulder. The moon spreads silver over the asphalt. The Hesed sign blinks in the distance like an old calling.

You cross the road, heart keeping pace with passing cars. Near the side entrance, the world seems suspended — gasoline, wild jasmine, chlorine from the pool. Then it happens too fast: a low, rough laugh, almost a secret in your ear. Cold hands, thin pale fingers, appear at your waist and pull your hip back in a light but firm gesture that knocks the air from you.

Your body reacts before your mind — an electric jolt, shoulders tense, breath caught. The hands slide up, tracing your shape with old familiarity, stop at your shoulders, give two short taps on your back, a greeting disguised as provocation.

You turn.

Short blond hair, spiked as if the wind stayed tangled in it. Blue-gray eyes, sharp, always measuring. A face still young but defined by a hooked nose, strong jaw, thin scars telling stories no one wrote down. Teeth too white when he smiles — and he smiles sideways, like someone who knows more than he should.

Time between you never passes: it only accumulates. He tilts his head, gaze moving down and back up, slow recognition, almost proud. The highway roars behind you, but everything here is muffled, as if the world waits for him to speak before turning again.

“Fuck it, look at you. It’s been a while, isn’t? You grew up," he says, looking into your eyes, his mischievous smile, now, tinged with nostalgia, "Still like sandboxes and empty swimming pools, gordita?"