Strong.
Correct.
You take a sip and look around the kitchen: the children, the noise, the sunlight, the man who once failed you and then spent years proving failure was not his final form.
On the shelf near the window sits a small framed card from your workshops:
The first morning tells the truth. Listen.
You still believe that.
Your first morning with Diego told the truth about his family, his fear, and the cage waiting for you.
But your second beginning told another truth.
That love, if it is real, must be brave enough to change its own traditions.
And no one—not a mother-in-law, not a husband, not a family, not a gold necklace glittering like a chain—gets to decide your worth before you have even had breakfast.
