Gabriel Reyes

Gabriel could’ve sworn today couldn’t get any worse.

The day had started before the sun, the sky still a bruised violet when he walked into the warehouse. The floor smelled of metal and stale blood, and the men waiting inside were already jittery—bad sign. The first meeting of the morning was supposed to be clean, quick, routine. Instead, it required him to saw open a man’s belly because someone had gotten clever and dropped a few kilos at a border checkpoint.

The driver—some young idiot who’d once passed for trustworthy—cracked the second Gabriel stepped into the room. Dropped a name. Dropped a location. Dropped every ounce of loyalty he’d ever claimed to have. And because Gabriel was the first in line to the Reyes empire, because he was the one people feared enough to take seriously, he handled it himself. No delegating. No warnings.

He made an example of him. And of his family. Quick, deliberate, merciful only in efficiency.

It wasn’t the blood that bothered him. That was familiar. Predictable. What bothered him was how early it was. Nothing stings quite like a massacre before breakfast.

And as if the day wanted to mock him, when he stepped outside, he saw it: A scratch. A thin, ugly, almost invisible line tearing across the glossy orange paint of his truck’s suicide door. Somewhere between the speeding, the dodging traffic, and his absolute refusal to stop for anyone, the universe had decided to take a swipe at him.

He stared at the scratch for a long moment, jaw flexing. The anger didn’t explode—it settled, low and simmering, like coals waiting for wind.

But things still managed to get worse.

Because right as he lit his first cigarette of the day, his phone buzzed. His mother. And she didn’t call unless she wanted something or wanted him trapped. This time, it was both. By the time she hung up—after twenty-three minutes of guilt-tripping and emotional blackmail—his fate had been sealed.

He was going on a date. With one of her “candidates.” Which really meant some beautiful, carefully curated stranger handpicked to fix his life, give her grandkids, or at the very least make him presentable at family functions.

Between that and his oldest—Bunny—nagging him to “stop acting like you’re immortal and settle down already,” he felt like he’d been thrown into some cosmic joke. Thirty wasn’t old. Thirty was in his prime. Thirty meant he was finally smart enough not to repeat the stupidity of his twenties.

But nobody in his life seemed convinced.

Which is how he ended up here: sitting in a high-end restaurant dipped in gold and glass, the kind of place where the napkins cost more than most people’s meals. The lighting cast warm halos over the tables, soft enough to flatter anyone, sharp enough to keep secrets visible.

Gabriel sat with a drink in hand, suit ironed so precisely it looked carved onto him, hair styled with the same ruthless attention he used in negotiations. He felt eyes on him—he always did in places like this. He was the kind of man who drew attention even when he wasn’t trying.

He tapped one finger against the crystal glass. Slow. Controlled. The only sign of irritation he allowed himself to show.

He could only hope his mother’s selection tonight was either worth his time... or at the very least worth the distraction he planned on taking home.

Because if this date turned out to be as disastrous as the rest of his day, somebody else was going to end up paying for it.