Mira moved between the table and the kitchen, plates in hand, her steps quick and practiced from years of doing this same routine.
She served breakfast with a side of cured ham and fresh fruit, four dishes lined neatly across the table, water glasses placed beside each.
The smell of warm bread still clung faintly to her sleeves, carried over from the ensaimadas she’d baked earlier.
While she worked, Jeff busied himself at the stove, brewing café con leche the way he always did, mixing strong coffee with scalded milk until the color turned rich and pale brown.
When he finished, he carried the drinks out and set them beside the plates. Then he returned to the kitchen, where Mira stood wrapping a few extra ensaimadas into a box, her fingers moving with quiet precision.
"Who’s that for, Lady Mira?" Jeff asked.
"Well, the staff should have breakfast too, no?" Mira asked, finishing the wrapping. "I’m reserving this for them. They’re mostly always on duty at night. I’m afraid that might make them really worn out."
"Ah, Lady Mira, that’s very kind of you." Jeff replied, then clicked his teeth. "But the staff are more wild eaters than you’d expect. Something as compact as a few pastries won’t sustain them for long."
"Oh..." Mira’s expression dropped. "I didn’t know that."
"It’s okay, really. I’ll finish up here and pass it unto them before breakfast’s ready."
"Thanks Jeff."
Mira stepped further into the kitchen and took in the mess still waiting to be cleared, flour dusted across the table, the oven still warm, the sink piled high with used baking utensils.
A faint haze of steam still hung near the ceiling, leftover from the batch of ensaimadas that had come out barely an hour ago.
"I could stay here and help out."
"Please, Lady Mira. Your food’s gonna get cold. And besides, my assisting chef would be here any minute now, so there’s no need to worry."
"Alright then."
Still, Mira didn’t feel right leaving him buried under the mess she’d made. She held her tongue anyway. She slipped off her apron, set it on the counter, and walked out toward the dining hall.
Her sisters were already seated, tearing through the pastries and eating with the kind of hunger that came from skipping dinner the night before. One of them reached for a second ensaimada before the first was even finished, crumbs scattering loosely across her plate.
Neither of them seemed touched by the taste, no flicker of memory, no pause at the familiar sweetness of their late mother’s recipe. They greeted her a quick good morning, then went back to eating, not once asking why she’d made it.
Not that they seemed to remember it in the first place.
Mira didn’t sit down right away. She turned toward the staircase instead, heading up to Nico’s room to let him know breakfast was ready. She reached his door and knocked three times.
No answer came.
She knocked again, unsure what she’d even say if he did answer. Then she leaned closer, pressing her ear lightly against the wood.
Groaning drifted through the door, low and strained, followed by the sound of bedsheets thrashing against something. The picture formed clearly enough in her mind. She didn’t wait any longer. She twisted the handle and stepped inside.
Nico sat hunched on his bed, crouched low like something cornered, sheets pooled over his shoulders and head. His face looked drawn and exhausted, eyes raw and threaded with veins, dark circles pressed deep beneath them. The curtains were drawn shut, and the room sat heavy with a stale, airless quiet.
"What the heck–" Mira barely got the words out before she caught sight of him properly. "Are you okay?"
"Get out."
Nico said back, not meeting her eyes.
"What?"
Nico met her eyes this time, and for a second there, she saw a page of complete black fill the corner of his eyes.
"I said, get out."
At his words, something shifted in Mira’s expression, worry curdling slowly into anger. She turned without another word, walked out, and shut the door hard behind her.
Regret came almost instantly, crawling up through her chest before she’d even reached the stairs.
She thought of how early she’d woken that morning, how she’d dug through memory for her mother’s recipe and spent over two hours in the kitchen getting it right, only to be thrown out by the very person she’d made it for.
Her fists curled shut, then loosened, then curled again.
She skipped breakfast altogether, walked straight to her room, and dropped onto the bed, drained. The door clicked shut behind her, and the quiet that followed felt heavier than it should have.
Her mind kept circling back to it, his words, the cold, beaten way he’d looked at her before sending her out without so much as asking why she’d come in the first place.
’I wanna punch a hole through his damn skull.’
She pressed a pillow over her face and shut her eyes for a moment. Then she felt something warm trail down her thigh, something sticky and unmistakable.
"Huh?"
She reached beneath her nightdress and pulled her fingers back stained red. Blood. Menstrual blood.
"Seriously?" She let the words out in a long sigh. "This day just keeps getting better and better."
***
Nico hadn’t moved an inch.
Six hours had passed in that same crouched position, and sleep never came anywhere near him.
It didn’t help that both bulbs in his room had burst hours ago, leaving only the thin gray light bleeding in from beneath the curtains.
The voices only grew louder in the dark, whispers curling tighter around his skull, some even calling his name each time his eyes drifted shut.
The pull to stay right where he was, to let it all sink in and settle, grew harder to resist by the minute. He wrapped the sheet tighter around himself, drew his knees in, and silently begged whatever this was to stop.
Then morning arrived. He hadn’t realized how much time had slipped by until sunlight crept steadily through the window.
His eyes were bloodshot, barely able to blink without stinging. Dark rings sat heavy beneath them. In just six hours, he looked less like himself and more like someone who’d seen things he shouldn’t have, which, in a way, he had.
And somewhere in all that, the corruption had reached far enough to twist his response to Mira, pulling words out of him that he never meant to say.
’What have I done?’
Somewhere beneath the exhaustion, a small, stubborn part of him held onto the regret.
Two hours later, he forced himself out of bed and dragged his feet toward the bathroom. He splashed water over his face, dried it with a towel, then made his way downstairs.
A boy in an apron stood serving a row of dishes, red hair catching the morning light first. He balanced a tray against his forearm, setting cups down one by one with careful, deliberate hands.
When he spotted Nico, he snapped a quick salute, as though he already knew exactly who was standing in front of him.
"Jeff’s new sous chef?"
He asked, mentally tallying how many recruits Jeff had brought in by now.
The boy nodded.
Jeff had pulled in so many new recruits over time that he’d climbed high enough within the organization to be named a capo.
Even so, the chef still chose to stay rooted in the mansion’s kitchen instead of running his own four-star restaurant, something Nico had suggested to him more than once.
If anything, Jeff only wanted restaurants opened for the recruits who managed to survive his brutal training all the way through. It was a small thing to most, but Nico knew how much pride the chef quietly carried in it.
Nico gave the boy’s shoulder an encouraging pat and walked toward the kitchen. Jeff stood over the stove, stirring something in a pan, and glanced up the moment he noticed him.
"Why’s breakfast taking this long, Jeff?"
Jeff looked at him, puzzled, the ladle still moving through the pan without pause.
"This is the staff’s meal." Jeff explained. "I thought you skipped breakfast on purpose?"
"Did you make me any?"
"Lady Mira did. Two hours ago." Jeff turned off the stove. "She went upstairs to call you, but neither of you returned. So I thought maybe you were skipping again."
Two hours ago.
The memory surfaced fast, Mira stepping into his room, and him sending her right back out, colder than he meant to, faster than he should have.
She’d made him breakfast.
And that was exactly how he’d repaid her.
’Ah great. This day just keeps getting better.’