Rafaela watched it happen and felt no satisfaction, only a strange clarity, because she was witnessing the truth of this family laid bare and it was uglier than any of them would ever admit.

That morning, in the group chat, they had been a wall — twenty voices in perfect agreement that the city girl needed to learn her place.

It had looked, from the outside, like loyalty.

It had looked like a family that stuck together.

But it had never been loyalty.

It had been a shared appetite, and the thing they were all feeding on was Rafaela’s money, funneled through Leticia, who had bought their obedience with dresses and deposits and favors, and called the buying family. The moment the money stopped, so did the loyalty, instantly, completely, the way a fire goes out when you cut the gas.