A tiny hand, sticky with caramel and chocolate smeared across her fingers, grasped Roberto de la Cruz’s trousers with surprising force. Sitting in the airport’s waiting area, his frown deepened as he glanced at his watch, his patience growing thin. He hated airports. He hated waiting. And most of all, he hated anyone who dared invade the space he had come to protect as his own.
He glanced down, preparing to offer a polite but firm reprimand… and lost his breath.
The owner of that little hand was a girl no older than three. Her round cheeks and red coat, covered in fluff, made her seem almost angelic. A beige hat with cat ears hung low over her eyes, and she smiled as though the world itself were a joke, as if the man in the dark suit with the stern demeanor were just another adult to ask for a favor.
The girl tugged at his sleeve, pointing toward a nearby pastry shop window, babbling something only she understood. Roberto felt the instinct to pull away, but then he saw it.
Hanging from her neck, gleaming in the sterile terminal light, was a necklace. An antique gold chain with a pendant of unmistakable design: a tiny angel with one wing and a ruby at the center, glowing like a heart.
The world seemed to bend.
Roberto knew that necklace. It didn’t “look like” it. It was it. His throat constricted, as if someone were squeezing the life out of him from within. His hands—those same hands that had signed contracts with the power to move countries—began to shake.
He had designed it.
