The morning air at my parents' estate was crisp, a sharp contrast to the suffocating stench of the hotel room I’d left hours ago. I was in my father’s study, the scent of old leather and expensive bourbon grounding me as we looked over the files Ayisha had compiled on the Cortez family.

"The parents are old-school, Mateo," my father said, his eyes scanning the map of the Cortez estate in the countryside. "They live for their reputation. Finding out Valentina has been playing house with her high school mistake in a hotel you paid for? It’ll crush them again after her " supposedly visit to a family" when they...