Noud winced as the soles of his feet touched the hot, black sand.

“I told you to bring water shoes.”

“You did, and I forgot,” he grumbled.

"I'm sorry for what happened, Majo," Carlos said, his eyes cast down. "And for that hellishly long journey still ahead of us."

María José waved it off.

"Have I just landed in the middle of a mafia showdown?" María José asked in a deadpan voice.

With a slight grimace, she stirred the machine-made coffee in her flimsy plastic cup with a thin wooden stick.

“Carlos?” María José’s voice was tired and uncertain. “Where did you bring me?”

She seemed less surprised than him to wake up next to Carlos in an unfamiliar place.

The morning sunlight burned Carlos’s nose more harshly than usual. He turned to his other side, still not ready to open his eyes. But as he shifted, the silky fabric brushing against his face caught him off guard. What kind of bedding had the housekeeper put on?

The first thing Bernard did was check the cameras. He hadn’t wanted to do it in front of Timothy because, quite frankly, he was embarrassed that a few pensioners were making a fool of him. Even if their main target wasn’t Carlos, but Ted.

Noud reluctantly dragged himself up to the sixth floor. He pressed his lips together to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally speak. In his current state, he was only capable of whining about the suffocating, urine-scented stairwell, or cursing about their destination.

“Carlos has switched to turbo mode,” Noud chuckled.

Whenever they needed to discuss something important, the two men would usually retreat to the kitchen, where the chances of being overheard were much lower.

The threats written to Viktoria fluttered around the residents like confetti.

“Who would write something so vile to you, Viktoria?” Pauline asked, horrified.

“I thought of María José, Ted, and you,” the German mother replied in an emotionless tone.

On that Sunday morning, the birds woke the residents of Calle la Rosa 22 with an unusually loud chorus of chirping. As if some strange, invisible hand had synchronized the internal alarms of the owners and tenants of the eight houses.