Samia Vince Banderos -

Samia drove through the night, her old Toyota humming like a lullaby. She arrived at the resort as dawn bled gold over the sea. She found Alisha alive—not kidnapped, but sequestered. Pregnant. Protected.

Samia picked up the photo. Her thumb brushed the corner. “And what does your gut say, Mr. Vincent?”

She took the case for two reasons: one, her rent was due, and two, the woman in the photo was wearing a bracelet Samia had seen before—a jade-and-silver heirloom that belonged to the Banderos family. The same bracelet her own father had given her mother before he disappeared twenty years ago. Samia Vince Banderos

The photo showed a woman with sea-glass eyes and a smile that could start a war. “My fiancée, Alisha. She vanished three weeks ago. The police say she ran off. I say she was taken.”

That’s what her mother, Corazon, reminded her every Sunday over cold lumpia and hot tsismis. “You arrange flowers better than you arrange clues,” Corazon would say, shaking her head. But Samia had a different kind of arrangement in mind—the arrangement of truth. Samia drove through the night, her old Toyota

Just in case.

And standing by the window, watching the sunrise, was Samia’s father. Pregnant

Her mother never did get that wedding planner. But every Sunday, Corazon started setting an extra plate at the table.

Samia Vince Banderos was not supposed to be a detective. She was supposed to be a wedding planner.