Alma's Own

EPILOGUE

Alma stood on a balcony that overlooked the city, without trying to dominate it. Morning light spilled across the rooftops, warm and unhurried. The air carried the sound of ordinary life, traffic, voices, footsteps moving forward.

Her work in dance and the arts had resumed not as a camouflage or access, but as creation and passion. The name Guadelupe Alma Carballo existed now, like a resurrection not as a ghost of exile or a shadow of loss but as herself, although she still maintained Alma Reyes as a stage name for her creations and performances. Studio knew her for her discipline, vision, and control. Her dance students spoke of her with respect, not curiosity.

She had reclaimed what mattered, not the wealth that had been restored through legal channels and careful restitution, but dignity, history and truth.

Daniel joined her quietly, two cups of coffee in hand. His life had taken a different shape as well since victor demise. Long before that, he had been building something of his own, quietly, deliberately – Ethical investment funds. Cultural preservation projects. Renewable infrastructure partner ships across Spain and Portugal. He had stayed invisible by design, knowing visibility inside the Soler empire had always been dangerous.

Now his projects flourished.

Not loudly. Not arrogantly.

Honestly.

“I have a meeting this afternoon” he said casually, handling her a cup. “Lisbon. They want to expand.”

She smiled. “You always did prefer substance over spectacle.”

Daniel leaned against the railing beside her “I learned that early.”

They stood in comfortable silence.

Their relationship had changed too, or rather have progressed.

They moved in together, a live in relationship at that, no secrecy, no adrenaline-fueled urgency. What remain was steadier, built on shared understanding rather than survival. Desire still lived between them, but it was no longer sharpened by danger.

It was chosen.

“Do you ever wonder, Daniel said quietly, if things could have ended differently? How it ended?” For us?

Alma understood quickly that this was only based on the fact that Victor never lived to watch all he built with lies and deceit fall apart, what he sowed coming back at him in tenfold, no, he never lived any longer to watch his world crumble further, he never lived to go through trials, or interrogations, not to talk of s and this may seem as he had gotten away with it forever, but in the midst of all that she had found someone compatible intimidate man standing with her now .

“No, she said after a long pause.” but I don’t glorify it either. Justice isn’t clean. It just finishes what pain begins, and just maybe, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be us”

He smiled faintly, brushing a streak of hair away from her neck. “I like where we ended up”

So do I” she replied “Not because it was easy, but because we found each other in the middle of it”

Daniel leaned closer, pressing a light kiss to her temple. “That’s the part I would never change.”

Alma let herself rest against him, the city unfolding quietly below them, no longer a battlefield but a future

Below them, Madrid moved forward, seemingly unaware, unconcerned yet alive. The city that had once been like a chessboard, now simply felt a like a place to exist and live freely.

Alma took a slow breath. Her father had feared this city once, had run from it.had carried guilt and caution like armor.

She wished he could see her now.

Not victorious

But free

Daniel reached for her hand, not to anchor, not to protect, but to share space.

And for the first time in her life, Alma did not plan any next move.

She simply lived.