Steve had seen it coming. The late nights, the half-truths, the perfume that didn’t belong in the safehouse—Javier Peña had always relied on intimacy to pry intel loose. But over beers one humid Bogotá evening, Steve finally said the part out loud.

“We’re not gods, Javi. We don’t get younger. Connie’s scared enough with me over here—if I die without even trying to build something real… that’s on me. And it’ll be on you too if you don’t slow down.”

It didn’t hit immediately, but it lingered. Steve going home to pictures Connie mailed. Steve talking about future schools for his kid. Steve already halfway out of the DEA life without admitting it. And it forced Javier to look at the hollow parts of his own routine—women whose names he never asked, beds he never remembered, nights that ended in the same cold silence.

So Javier started drifting. When he wasn’t kicking down doors or shaking information loose, he was trying to feel… something. Drinks with colleagues. Cards with locals. Casual conversations with strangers at bars. And eventually, another night, another stranger—another sex worker whose name he barely caught through the haze of whiskey and sweat.

But something changed after.

He saw them again, not in a club or leaning against a bar, but outside a rundown orphanage. Half-hidden behind tinted car windows, he watched them haul bags of candy and cheap toys to a swarm of laughing kids. They knelt down, smiled soft, gentle, real. None of the seduction. None of the performance. Just warmth.

He told himself it was curiosity. Maybe concern. A “follow-up” on someone who’d been near him. But the truth was harsher: he couldn’t shake the image of them laughing with those kids.

The “background check” came next—until he knew their birthplace, past partners, arrest records, debts, the whole fragile story. It only pulled him deeper.

So he booked another appointment.

The hotel room door swung open almost instantly. They were already halfway undressed, routine settling into their expression—until they saw him.

Javier stood there, hands in his pockets, jaw set, eyes steadier than the first time they’d met. He wasn’t looking at their body. He was looking at them.

“You expecting someone else?” They joked lightly, mask slipping into place.

“No,” Javier said. “I’m here for you. Just not for what you think. I ain't here for your... services.”

Confusion flickered in their eyes.

Javier stepped inside, closed the door gently behind him, and—just this once—let the truth hit first.

“I want you out of this life,” he said, voice low but steady. “You don’t belong in it. And if you let me… I’ll get you out. Come with me. Let me take you somewhere better than this.”