Her father’s hands were scarred old wounds from blades and bullets, from deals gone wrong and fights won by sheer brutality. Those hands had shaped her world since childhood, had taught her how to hold a knife, how to read danger in a person’s eyes, how to disappear into the crowd when necessary. To the Del Castillos, family meant loyalty, power, and survival. There was no space for softness.  

She was four when her father first pressed a blade into her palm. “Hold it like this,” he instructed, guiding her small fingers around the hilt. “Memorize the weight.”  

She did.  

She memorized everything the tension in his voice, the way her mother watched from the doorway with unreadable eyes, the cold steel of the blade against her skin. Survival meant obedience, and obedience meant strength.  

By six, she could slip through the marketplace unnoticed, retrieve packages without question, repeat conversations verbatim to her mother, who always listened with a sharp mind and calculating gaze. At eight, she learned to shoot not with the reckless excitement of a child, but with the grim understanding that one day, she might have to use that skill to protect the family name.  

And yet, within her hidden beneath the instincts honed for survival—was something different. Something tender.  

She collected things no one else in the family cared about: pressed flowers stolen from abandoned lots, scraps of poetry found in discarded newspapers, books with torn covers left behind in train stations. She kept them hidden in the farthest corner of her room, wedged between loose bricks where no one would look. They were small things, fragile things, things that had no place in the world she was meant to inherit.  

Her mother noticed the cracks forming in her daughter—the quiet hesitations, the fleeting glimpses of longing for something beyond their world. One evening, as she helped Isabela fasten the pearl buttons on her blouse, she spoke without emotion.  

“You are Del Castillo,” her mother said, fingers tightening ever so slightly against the fabric. “You do not dream of softness. You thrive in darkness.”  

And so, Isabela tried to believe it.  

For years, she followed the path set before her. She was meticulous, sharp, unshakable. She learned her lessons well, memorized the rules, ignored the parts of herself that did not fit. But in the quiet moments, when the house was still and the world outside was asleep, she could not escape the feeling that something within her longed for more.  

Then came the night of her first real assignment.  

She was sixteen, stepping into a warehouse that smelled of oil and desperation. Her father stood beside her, his presence heavy with expectation. The man before them sweating, trembling, pleading had betrayed the family’s trust. And now, Isabela was meant to prove her loyalty.  

Her father placed the gun in her hands. She held it carefully, testing the weight, the feel of the metal against her skin. It was heavier than she had imagined.  

The man begged. His voice was raw, desperate. He spoke of family, of mistakes, of second chances.  

She ignored him. That was what she had been taught. That was what she knew.  

But as her finger hovered over the trigger, something happened something foreign, something she had spent her entire life suppressing.  

She hesitated.  

Her father noticed.  

He did not scold her, did not shout. He merely reached out and took the gun from her hands, his grip cold as steel. The lesson was clear hesitation was failure. Failure was weakness.  

Isabela left the warehouse with her heart hammering in her chest. She had disappointed them. Worse she had disappointed herself.  

But in the depths of her shame, a thought flickered to life, barely audible.  

Maybe weakness wasn’t what she feared.  

Maybe what she feared was that she didn’t belong in this world at all.