Chapter 22: Family Fractured
Mia’s scream didn’t just break the silence; it shattered the fragile truce the night had built. It was a raw, tearing sound of pure revulsion that vibrated in the copper pans hanging from the ceiling.
Dominic and Catalina broke apart in the dark storage room, the world crashing back in. The door flew open a second later, the slat of moonlight now framing Letty’s panicked face. “It’s Mia,” she hissed, her eyes wide. “She heard you.”
They’d forgotten the old house’s acoustics, the way sound travelled through vent shafts. That low, private whisper—no lo olvides, te amo, Cat—hadn’t been private at all.
Chauney moved first, instinct overriding pain. He was down the narrow stairs in three long strides, Catalina half a step behind him, her heart hammering against her ribs.
The kitchen scene was frozen for a single, horrific snapshot. Mia stood in the center of the room, her body rigid, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides. At her feet lay the shattered remnants of her coffee mug, brown liquid pooling like blood on the pale tiles. Her face was a mask of such profound betrayal and disgust it was almost unrecognizable.
Jesse and Leon were frozen by the back door, logs forgotten in their arms, their expressions stunned.
Then Mia moved. It wasn’t a lunge so much as a furious uncoiling. She didn’t go for Dominic. She went for Catalina, her nails aimed at her sister’s face, a wordless shriek ripping from her throat. “You sick fucks!”
Letty was already in motion. She intercepted Mia mid-step, wrapping strong arms around her torso from behind, pinning Mia’s arms to her sides. “Stop it, Mia! Just stop!”
“Get your hands off me!” Mia thrashed, her boots scraping on the tile. “Let me go! How could you? How could you both?” Her eyes, wild and streaming, locked on Catalina. “You’re my sister!”
Catalina had instinctively curled herself around Mina, who was now awake and crying, startled by the noise. She held her daughter close, turning her face into her shoulder, a human shield against the verbal shrapnel.
Dominic stepped directly into the space between his sisters, his body a solid wall. His expression was closed, granite. The tenderness from the storage room was gone, replaced by a cold, defensive ferocity. “You don’t touch her,” he said to Mia, his voice low and deadly calm. “Ever.”
“Or what, Dom?” Mia spat, still struggling against Letty’s hold. “You’ll hurt me too? What’s one more broken family rule to you?”
“Mia, please,” Catalina’s voice emerged, strained and quiet over Mina’s wails. “Not like this.”
“Like what?” Mia screamed. The sound made Leo start crying in his incubator, a sharp, distressed sound that pierced the chaos. “How else is there? Should I sit down and have a fuckin’ tea party about it? My brother and my sister—" She choked on the words, a violent shudder wracking her frame.
Leon finally dropped his armful of wood with a crash. “Hey, okay, everyone just needs to take a deep breath—"
“Don’t you dare tell me to breathe!” Mia wheeled on him, her anger finding a new target. “You knew? All of you?” Her gaze swept over Letty, still holding her, then to Jesse’s guilty, averted eyes. “Oh my God. You all knew.”
“It wasn’t our secret to tell,” Letty said tightly, her grip firm.
“It’s not a secret, Letty! It’s a crime! It’s… it’s wrong!” Mia’s voice cracked. She stopped struggling, going limp in Letty’s arms, her energy suddenly spent and replaced by a hollow, gasping despair. “Mina,” she whispered, looking at the little girl clinging to Catalina. Her eyes widened with fresh, dawning horror. “Oh, God. Is she… are you…?”
She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. The question hung in the air, more damning than any accusation.
Dominic didn’t flinch. “She’s ours.”
The simple declaration, stripped of all defense or explanation, landed with the weight of a tombstone.
Mia made a small, wounded sound. She ripped herself free from Letty’s slackened grasp, stumbling backward until her hips hit the kitchen counter. She stared at Mina as if seeing her for the first time, her gaze tracing the curve of her cheek, the shape of her eyes. Looking for the proof.
“You had a kid,” Mia breathed, the reality sinking in, layer by terrible layer. “You had a kid together. And then you had more.” Her eyes flicked to the incubator where Leo’s cries were escalating.
“We didn’t plan it,” Catalina said, her own voice trembling. She rocked Mina, shushing her gently. “It just… happened.”
“Things like that don’t just happen!” Mia shot back, finding a last reservoir of fury. “You make choices! Disgusting, selfish choices!” She pointed a shaking finger at Dominic. “And you. You’re supposed to protect her. Not… not this.”
“I am protecting her,” Dominic growled, taking a half-step forward. “From everything. Even from you right now.”
“From the truth? You call that protection?” Mia laughed, a brittle, broken sound. “You’ve locked her in a nightmare and called it a fairytale.” She looked at Catalina, and her expression softened for a fraction of a second, just enough to show the grief beneath the rage. “Cat, please. Look at this. Look at what he’s done to you.”
Catalina straightened her spine. She met Mia’s gaze, and for the first time, there was no apology in it, only a weary, unshakeable certainty. “He didn’t do anything to me I didn’t want done, Mia. This is my choice. My life.”
The finality in her voice was a door slamming shut.
Mia looked from her sister’s defiant face to her brother’s unyielding one. She saw the unity there, a fortress built for two. She was on the outside. She would always be on the outside.
The fight left her completely, leaving behind a devastating calm. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Okay,” she said, her voice flat. “Okay.”
She turned and walked, with deliberate steps, past Jesse and Leon, who flinched out of her way. She picked her coat up from the hook by the door.
“Where are you going?” Letty asked, tension lining her voice.
“Away from here,” Mia said, not looking back as she shoved her arms into the sleeves. “I can’t breathe in this house.”
“Mia, it’s the middle of the night. There’s a blizzard coming down out there,” Jesse said, taking a tentative step forward.
“I don’t care.” She yanked the door open. A gust of freezing wind and swirling snow blasted into the warm kitchen, carrying the scent of pine and impending storm. She paused on the threshold, a silhouette against the whiteout.
She didn’t look at Dominic or Catalina. She looked at Letty. “You knew. All these years.” It wasn’t a question.
Letty held her gaze, giving a single, slow nod. “Yeah.”
Mia’s lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. Acknowledgment. Another betrayal. She turned her face into the stinging wind.
The frigid air swirled into the kitchen, carrying needles of snow that melted instantly on the heated floor. Mia didn’t step out. She turned back, one hand braced on the doorframe, her figure outlined by the blizzard’s white void.
Her voice, when it came, was flat and cold as the mountain air. “I’m going to call Jacob.” She let the words hang, watching Dominic’s face tighten. “I’m going to tell him everything.”
“Mia, don’t,” Catalina breathed, the plea barely audible over the wind.
“And then,” Mia continued, her eyes locking with Dominic’s, “I’m going to call Mom and Dad.” A brittle, mirthless smile touched her lips. “Yeah. They’re alive, Dom. A witness protection detail in Phoenix, thinking their two oldest kids are dead because some cartel hit went sideways. They mourn you. Every damn day.”
The floor seemed to tilt beneath Catalina’s feet. She swayed, clutching Mina tighter. Dominic didn’t move, but the color drained from his knuckles where they gripped the table’s edge.
“All these years,” Mia whispered, the hatred leaching from her voice, replaced by something worse: pity. “You built this whole twisted little world on a lie they told to keep you safe. And you ruined it.”
“You’re lying,” Dominic said, but the statement lacked force, a reflex.
“Am I?” Mia shot back. “You think I just stumbled up this mountain? They’ve been looking. Through channels. Quietly. They never stopped.” She took a shuddering breath, the cold finally reaching her.
The blizzard’s howl filled the kitchen for a long moment, the only sound beyond Leo’s muffled cries. Dominic stared at his younger sister, his world—the one he’d built, fought for, killed for—cracking along a fault line he never knew existed.
“Alive,” Catalina whispered. The word tasted like ash and stolen time.
“Yeah,” Mia said, her voice brittle with a terrible triumph. She stepped back inside, pushing the door closed against the gale, sealing them all in with the new, unthinkable truth. The wind’s scream faded to a moan. “All this hiding. All this… this. For nothing.”
Dominic found his voice, a low, dangerous rumble. “You’re lying to hurt us.”
“Call them.” Mia’s challenge cut through the room. She dug into her jacket pocket, pulled out a slim phone, and held it up. A single, triumphant beacon in the dim light. “The number’s in here. Under ‘Aunt Irma.’ A safe line.” She tossed it onto the marble counter where it slid to a stop near Dominic’s hand. “Let’s call them together, Dom. You and Cat. Tell Mom and Dad what you’ve been up to. Tell them how sick their two oldest are.”
Catalina flinched as if struck. Mina, sensing her mother’s distress, buried her face deeper in Catalina’s neck with a soft whimper.
“Mia, that’s enough,” Letty said, moving forward, but her usual authority was gone. She looked stunned, her eyes darting between the phone and Dominic’s frozen face.
“No, it’s not nearly enough,” Mia fired back, her gaze never leaving her brother. “You wanted a family so bad? Let’s have a real family reunion. Right now.” She gestured violently at the phone. “Tell them about the races. Tell them about the cartel money. Then tell them you’re together. Tell them about their grandkids.”
The images her words painted were merciless and vivid. Dominic saw his father’s face, not as a ghost, but alive, on a screen. Hearing the confession from his own mouth. He saw his mother’s hand going to her chest.
He didn’t reach for the phone. His hand remained on the table, white-knuckled. “Get out.”
“Or what?” Mia laughed, a sharp, shattered sound. “You’ll kill me?
“You’ll kill me?” Mia echoed, her laugh sharp as broken glass. She shook her head, a loose strand of dark hair sticking to her tear-damp cheek. “No. You’re not a monster. You just play house like one.”
She lunged, not at him, but for the phone on the counter. Her fingers closed around the cool metal and glass. Dominic’s own hand snapped out, a reflex, clamping over her wrist before she could pull it back. They stood locked, a brutal tableau over the marble, his grip like iron.
“Let go, Dom.” Her voice was low, strained.
“Think,” he ground out, his face inches from hers. His eyes were black pools, reflecting her furious, grief-stricken face. “You do this, you blow up everything. Not just us. Them. Their safety. You understand that?” He was trying to find the strategic fault line, the rational argument in an emotional earthquake.
“Their safety was a lie you built on!” she spat, twisting her arm. “You don’t get to use that now. Let go!”
Behind them, Mina’s whimpering escalated into a full cry. “Mami! Dada!” The sound, small and scared, sliced through the standoff.
Catalina moved. She placed Mina gently into Letty’s waiting arms, a silent transfer of primal responsibility. Then she stepped forward, her movements deliberate, and placed her hand over her brother’s, where it vise-gripped Mia’s wrist.
Her touch was gentle. Dominic’s eyes flicked to her, a question in the grim set of his jaw.
“Let her,” Catalina said, her voice unnervingly calm. The panic from moments before had hardened into a glacial resolve. She looked at her little sister. “Call them.”
Mia stared, uncertainty flickering behind her anger for the first time.
“You think you’re exposing a secret?” Catalina continued, her tone flat, her gaze unwavering. “You’re just turning on a light. So do it. Let them see.” She applied slight pressure, peeling Dominic’s fingers back one by one. He resisted for a heartbeat, then his hand fell away, muscle ticking in his jaw.
Mia stood free, the phone clutched to her chest like a weapon. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. The moral high ground suddenly felt like a crumbling cliff edge. “You’re bluffing.”
“No,” Catalina said. She leaned back against the counter, arms crossing over her stomach as if holding herself together. A ghost of a smile, tired and sad, touched her lips. “I’m tired of hiding in the dark, Mia. So do it. Make the call.”
Letty, rocking Mina, muttered, “Cat, for Christ’s sake…”
Dominic said nothing. He just watched Mia, a silent challenge in his exhausted eyes. He was calling her bluff, pushing all his chips onto his sister’s terrifying show of strength.
Mia’s thumb hovered over the screen. The icons glowed up at her, a grid of mundane connections. Her finger shook. The anger that had propelled her was bleeding out, replaced by the cold, heavy dread of irreversible action. She looked from Catalina’s resigned defiance to Dominic’s stoic acceptance.
“They’re alive,” she whispered again, as if trying to convince herself of the stakes. “They’ll want to see you. To know you’re okay.”
“We’re not okay,” Dominic stated, the words simple and devastatingly true.
Something in his tone, the raw fatigue beneath the steel, finally broke through to Mia. Her furious certainty wavered. She was holding a live grenade, and her siblings were calmly asking her to pull the pin. She looked at the phone, then at their faces—her brother’s hardened by a lifetime of bad decisions he’d do again, her sister’s etched with a love that had cost her everything.
“It’s three in the morning in Phoenix,” Mia said, her voice dropping, logic offering a last, thin reed of escape.
“They’re parents,” Catalina replied softly, her eyes drifting to Mina in Letty’s arms. “They’re used to being woken up for nightmares.”
The simple truth of it hung in the air. There was no good time for this.
Mia’s thumb moved. A swipe, a tap. The soft glow of the screen illuminated her face from below, casting deep shadows under her eyes. The silence in the kitchen was absolute, broken only by the low hum of the incubator and the distant moan of the wind. Jesse and Leon stood frozen by the door, forgotten spectators to a family suicide.
She found the contact. ‘Aunt Irma’. Her thumb pressed the video call icon.
The electronic ringing tone, a bland, digital sound, was obscenely loud in the quiet room. It trilled once, twice.
Catalina closed her eyes. Dominic’s hand found hers on the countertop, their fingers lacing together in a bone-crushing grip. It was the first open touch they’d allowed themselves in front of anyone, a final, defiant act of unity.
A third ring.
Mia watched them, the color draining from her face as the reality of what she was doing crashed down. The anger was gone, leaving only a wide-eyed, nauseous fear. She was the demolitions expert, and the countdown had reached zero.
The ringing stopped.
The screen flickered, resolving from a blur into a familiar, sleep-softened face.
Her mother’s face. Older, lines carved by a grief Mia now understood was based on a lie, framed by a halo of bedside lamp light.
“Mia?” her mother’s voice, scratchy with sleep but instantly worried, spilled from the speaker. “Honey, what’s wrong? It’s so late.”
Mia opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her jaw worked silently. She stood there, a statue holding the unfolding catastrophe in her palm.
Her mother’s brow furrowed, her eyes squinting at the screen. She adjusted her glasses. The camera shifted, pulling back slightly.
And there, over her mother’s shoulder, sitting up in bed now, his own face hardening from sleep to alert concern, was their father.
He was alive.
The screen held a face Mia hadn’t seen in five years, older, the lines deeper, but undeniably their father. His hair was thinner, peppered with more gray, but his eyes held the same sharp intensity even through the pixelated gloom.
“Mia?” his voice, a rough echo of Dom’s but weathered by smoke and worry, joined her mother’s. “What’s happened? Are you safe?”
The simple questions, the visceral reality of their presence, short-circuited Mia’s rage. It left behind a hollow, shuddering ache. She tried to speak, but only a choked gasp emerged. Her thumb fumbled for the end-call button, a sudden, cowardly impulse to stop the hurtling train she’d set in motion.
She was too slow.
Her mother’s eyes, adjusting to the screen, widened. They darted past Mia’s frozen face, into the dimly lit kitchen behind her. They swept over Jesse and Leon, a puzzled frown forming. Then they landed.
On Dom.
He hadn’t moved. He stood squarely in the camera’s view, his jaw set, his arm pressed against Catalina’s. A direct challenge. A silent confirmation.
A soft, broken sound escaped their mother’s lips, a hand flying to her mouth. “Dios mío.”
Their father leaned closer, the screen blurring for a second before refocusing. His expression shifted from concern to a slow, dawning disbelief. He squinted, as if trying to dispel a trick of the light. “Mija,” he said to Mia, his voice dangerously calm. “Where are you?”
“Dad,” Mia whispered, the word cracking.
“Move the phone,” he commanded, that old, familiar authority snapping through the speaker.
Her hand, trembling violently, obeyed. She panned the camera, a slow, sickening reveal. It moved past Dom’s defiant stance, past his and Cat’s interlocked fingers—a detail their mother noticed instantly, her sharp intake of breath audible—and landed on Catalina’s face, streaked with tears and rigid with fear.
Their mother gasped. “Catalina?”
Then the camera dipped, catching Letty by the hearth, rocking a sobbing Mina. And beside her, the clear-sided incubator where Leo lay, his tiny form stirring.
The silence on the Phoenix end of the call was absolute, a vacuum sucking all the air from the Swiss chalet.
“Explain,” their father said, the single word like the cocking of a hammer.
All the rehearsed speeches, the accusations, the righteous fury evaporated from Mia’s mind. The truth poured out, raw and unfiltered. “They’re alive,” she blurted, her voice rising in a hysterical crescendo. “They’ve been alive the whole time! They’re here! And they have kids, Mom, Dad, they have kids together!” She was sobbing now, the phone shaking in her grip. “She’s married to him! She’s his wife! This is sick, do you hear me? This is so sick what they’re doing!”
The words hung in the digital space between them, ugly and final.
On the screen, their mother’s face crumpled, dissolving into a mask of pure, uncomprehending horror. She stared past the camera, her eyes fixed on some invisible point where the reality of her children had just shattered.
Their father’s face didn’t crumple. It hardened. It turned to stone. His gaze, laser-focused through the screen, found Dominic’s. “Is this true?”
Dominic didn’t look away. He gave one sharp, downward nod. “Yeah.”
The confirmation acted like a physical blow. Their father reeled back slightly, the camera jostling. When his face came back into frame, it was ashen. “The children,” he said, his voice stripped of all emotion. “They are yours? Together?”
“Yes,” Catalina answered this time, her own voice thin but clear. She lifted her chin. “A daughter. Mina. And a son. Leo. And another daughter Leos twin Stella.”