She didn’t pause or lower her voice as I leaned down to set her cup by her arm.

“No family background, no money, no property to her name,” Doña Victoria told the woman in the yellow suit.

“My son took her in purely out of the kindness of his heart.”

The woman in the yellow suit glanced at my shoes, then looked back down at her napkin.

Doña Victoria made a quick, careless gesture with her hand and knocked her full espresso cup sideways across the white marble tabletop.

The dark liquid pooled instantly, streaming over the edge and dripping onto the stone patio tiles right beside her designer sandals.