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“A lot,” you said.
Laura absorbed that without flinching.
“Who tried to kill you?”
“My cousin, I think. Maybe not alone.”
“Why?”
Because money makes ordinary people inventive and already-corrupt people theatrical. Because power is never merely owned; it is rented from the confidence of others, and men start killing when the lease feels threatened. Because your father built something too large to inherit cleanly and too valuable to surrender honorably, and grief had long ago rotted into entitlement in parts of the family tree.
You answered more simply.
“Control.”
Laura nodded once, as though that too made sense. In her world control did not wear Italian shoes and speak in merger language, but she knew it when she saw it.
Mateo looked between the two of you. “So are bad guys coming here?”
There was no way to tell a child the full truth without stealing too much of his morning.
“Not if I can help it,” you said.
That was enough for him. Children trust promises in direct proportion to how calmly they are spoken. Sofía, satisfied with the certainty of your tone rather than the complexity beneath it, went back to her oats. Laura did not. She kept looking at you with that mix of practicality and guarded tenderness that had defined her from the first night she dragged your half-dead body out of the mud.
“Then you need to leave,” she said.
The words hit harder than any boardroom betrayal.