Alejandra Jiménez trudged up the winding driveway that once made her feel so small. Every step up the wide, perfectly paved path was its own quiet victory. It was late morning, and the late fall sun dripped warmth across her bare forearms where her hoodie sleeves had been pushed back. The backpack on her shoulder, plaid, worn thin at the seams, bounced lightly with each step, an innocent-looking bundle that now carried a whole future zipped inside.
She didn’t hurry. Didn’t skulk around the hedges like she used to, eyes darting for cameras and staff who might ask what she was doing. Those days were dead and buried, and so were the Stevens as she had known them. All reduced to scraps, hidden in someone’s purse, a box, a collar. And now this house, which once chewed her up with silent orders and sterile perfection, had no claws left for her.
When she reached the front portico, she didn’t bother with the big carved double doors. She veered left, pushing through the old service entrance, the one for deliveries, housekeepers, gardeners. Her hand paused on the brass handle for half a second, remembering how the door used to squeal. She’d oil it herself once a month, unasked. No more. She pushed. The door swung soundlessly, as if it too knew who owned this day.
Inside, the kitchen was empty except for the quiet hum of the fridge. One of the gardeners’ hats lay forgotten on the island counter. She could see out the tall back windows, the wide yard, once trimmed to within an inch of its life by a hired team she used to greet with a nervous wave. Now it all looked… peaceful. Overgrown at the edges. Unbothered.
She walked on silent feet, her cheap sneakers padding over floors she used to mop on her hands and knees. She took her time, ran her fingertips along the marble backsplash she used to polish until her wrists ached. She left a faint smudge on purpose and didn’t wipe it away.
She passed the living room: empty. She could almost see Charity’s mother perched there, barking into a phone about some charity event. Could almost hear that dry laugh: We have staff for that, darling. She wondered, not for the first time, who held that woman now, whose purse she rattled around in like loose change.
The sound of her own steps up the grand staircase was different today. Each footfall was soft but certain. She didn’t bother hugging the wall or walking heel-to-toe to keep the old floorboards from creaking. She climbed straight up the center, feeling the soft give of the carpet under her soles, a carpet she’d once scrubbed blood out of when a dog they were dog-sitting got sick. She’d never told the lady what she’d done to keep that secret.
At the landing, she paused by a framed painting, a garden scene, lilies in bloom. For years, she’d hated it. It smelled faintly of lemon oil from the furniture polish she’d used on its frame. She brushed a finger over the gold leaf and smirked.
Charity’s bedroom door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open with her fingertips, let it swing wide on squeaky hinges she’d meant to oil months ago. The room still smelled faintly of expensive candles, lavender, something floral. The curtains were half-drawn, filtering soft light onto the plush carpet that could swallow half her rent if it were ever to be replaced.
She crossed the room in three easy strides and dropped her backpack on Charity’s massive white desk. The old wood creaked beneath its new weight. She didn’t unzip it right away. She just stood there a moment, letting her eyes roam the place she had only ever seen in half-glimpses while changing sheets.
The vanity: still cluttered with expensive creams, half-used serums in glass bottles tinted pink and gold. A hairbrush with strands of Charity’s perfect hair still caught in the bristles. A framed photo of her and some school friends, she recognized Kira’s face instantly, the frozen grin that once barely acknowledged Alejandra’s presence. She imagined showing that girl this scene now: the tiny version of Charity curled up in the dark pocket of her ratty backpack, waiting.
She reached out, lifted a tube of lipstick. Pale pink, a brand she’d seen once in a magazine but never touched. She popped the cap, twisted it up, then down again. Set it back, leaving it slightly off-center.
Patrona, she thought, rolling the word around her mind, tasting it like honey dripping from the tongue. It felt ridiculous, like a costume she hadn’t been invited to wear. But the paperwork said it. The database said it. Generitech said it. Mexico’s government said it. And if they said it, then it was true. She was the guardian now. No fancy dress, no silk gloves. Just her.
She dropped into Charity’s plush rolling chair and pulled the bag closer. One zipper tooth at a time, she opened the mouth that kept her new little trapped safe inside. She didn’t bother greeting her yet. She wanted to see how long it would take the tiny girl to crawl out on her own, how long it would take her to understand she had to come when called, even without words.
While she waited, Alejandra turned her head to the nightstand. There it was: the phone. Charity’s lifeline. Sleek, spotless, tucked next to a bottle of lavender sleep spray.
“Of course the latest model,” she murmured, the words more to herself than her tiny prisoner. Alejandra could feel the weight of it all pressing sweet and solid in her palm, Charity Stevens’ phone, still warm from her own careful touch. Not a scratch on the glass, not a fingerprint that hadn’t belonged to some white-gloved servant polishing away the world so the precious girl could live untouched. Now it hummed alive for her, the hum vibrating through the cheap metal ring on her thumb, a ring she’d bought for two bucks at a street stall, the kind Charity’s mother would’ve mocked if she’d ever noticed. She lifted it, felt the surprising weight of it. So light, yet so heavy with power, secrets, messages from people who’d never even know the old Charity was gone. She spun it in her palm, then rummaged in her pocket for her own battered flip phone. A flick of her thumb opened the back.
She leaned back in the rolling desk chair, a soft, lazy creak echoing through the vast, silent bedroom, and let her eyes roam the space. All this luxury: the thick rug under her shoes, the velvet curtains that must have cost more than a month’s rent back in her old studio apartment in Jalisco. And there, halfway across the room, the little trembling insect that used to be Miss Stevens, now just Patrona, as the paperwork said. Her paperwork. Registered free and clear under Mexican law.
She watched the tiny figure clamber awkwardly onto the edge of the desk. There was a moment, sharp and fleeting, when Charity locked eyes with her. Alejandra saw it then, not the old glare, not the spoiled pout, but pure animal confusion. A thought flickered behind those bright eyes, This can’t be happening. I’m not supposed to be here. But she was. And she would stay.
Alejandra tapped the phone against her palm, feeling the old, cracked plastic of her own burner phone digging into her thigh from her pocket. She weighed them both: the past she’d crawled through and the future she’d just claimed.
She made her voice casual, just another chore to tick off the list.
“Patrona code.”Alejandra said before her eyes flicked down at Charity. “Los pequeños no tienen propiedad. ¿Sí o no, Patrona? Property can’t own property. Tú misma usaste eso pa’ joder a gente como yo. Pues ahora, the same rules make you mine. So piénsalo bien — de quién es este phone, huh?”
Charity’s mouth opened but nothing came out. Her throat felt raw, as if she’d been screaming all night, though she hadn’t made a sound. She looked at the phone in Alejandra’s hand — her phone, her link to the world that had forgotten her so easily. It might as well have been a gold-plated lock on her cage now.
She wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair. That she didn’t mean for her world to turn out like this. But the words rotted behind her teeth.
Alejandra didn’t bother softening her voice this time. Let her new little squirm. Let her translate it in that big clever brain turned so pathetically small.
When the numbers spilled out, Alejandra nearly laughed. 0614. Her birthday. Of course. These rich girls, they thought the world would revolve forever around the day they arrived.
She typed it in slowly, deliberately, the way you crack open a safe in some cheap movie. Each soft tap of her thumb was a tiny thunderclap in the silence of the room. Then: the screen bloomed wide, unlocking without protest.
“Good girl,” she murmured, the words rolling easy off her tongue like she’d said them to a pet dog or a toddler. She reached out and stroked Charity’s tiny head, thumb brushing hair that cost more in salon visits than she’d ever admit. The girl stiffened but didn’t dare flinch away. Guardian training in Mexico was clear about this: consistency. Firmness. And when they obey, gentle affection to bind them tight.
She made short work of the rest. Fingers flicking: backup settings, cloud accounts, social media logins. All of it now rerouted through her name. Alejandra Jiménez, a seventeen-year-old illegal who was suddenly the legal guardian of this shriveled scrap of America’s rich.
A tiny pang of memory hit, the nights sleeping in an abandoned church when she first crossed, shivering under a stolen hoodie. The day she found her first cleaning job because someone needed their windows scrubbed and didn’t ask about papers. The cash always came under the table, the hours always longer than promised. And always, people like Charity’s mother watched her like she was a stray dog. And she had barked when they said bark, cleaned when they said clean.
And now? She watched the tiny thing quivering on her desk and thought, Now who’s the stray dog?
It was at that moment A message popped up: Kira is typing… and she laughed softly under her breath. Not anymore. One swipe. Gone.
Behind her, Charity trembled at the edge of the desk. Alejandra could almost feel her thoughts, sharp as a mosquito buzz: This is mine. This is my life. This is not how it’s supposed to be.
Alejandra thought of her first nights sleeping behind the dumpster behind the bakery downtown, hoping the owners wouldn’t chase her off before dawn. How many times she’d been told, You don’t belong here. Go back. She looked at Charity now, neat, soft, delicate and whispered to the empty room, “You don’t belong here either, Patrona. Not anymore.”
She popped the SIM tray out of the fancy phone. A small plastic piece, so tiny, so stupid, yet the key to a whole identity. She bent it neatly between her fingers until it snapped. Dropped the halves into the wastebasket by the desk with a soft plink.
“¡Ay, Patrona!” she called, voice slicing across the room like a whip crack. “¿Qué pasa? It’s only a phone. Or was. Now it’s mine.”
Charity’s voice quivered, trying so hard to fill the room but sounding to Alejandra’s ears like a squeak from a cornered mouse. She ignored it for a moment. Slipped her own SIM card into the phone, it looked wrong in such a polished slot, a scrap of street inside a palace. She plugged both phones together with the spare charger she’d dug from the nightstand drawer. It felt fitting: draining the old world into the new.
The phone rebooted, the fresh wallpaper flickering: not Charity’s polished mirror selfie, but a blurry picture of Alejandra’s family back home, siblings grinning gap-toothed in a school uniform, mamá looking tired but proud. Her real world, laid over Charity’s perfect one.
She changed the lock code. She wiped the last backup from the cloud. She even tapped out a quick message to her own mother, a photo of the fancy phone’s screen attached: Mira, mamá. Lo hice bien. Te mando más pronto. (Look, mama. I did good. I’ll send more soon.)
Then she looked at Charity, her Patrona. Just a shaky, oversized doll now, nothing more. This was the system finally working for her instead of chewing her up.
Alejandra reached over, pushed the desk chair back with a squeak, and stood tall over the girl. The room seemed to tilt, the old power flipped upside down.
“You want to call your Kira, sí? Go ahead.” She held up the phone, wagging it teasingly between two fingers before slipping it into her jeans pocket, far out of reach. “Pero, Patrona… remember. The number’s gone. All gone. This phone’s mine now. And so are you.”
She let that hang there a moment, the old hush of the room swallowing the words, pressing them into Charity’s bones where they could never be unlearned.
Knew this would happen, absolute power corrupts after all.
she really isn’t any more corrupted then she was before. She did what she needed to do to survive her entire time in America. this is really no different. scrapping and just doing what you need too. Not letting any chance to pull yourself out of the hole your in to be overlooked.
True, I am curious as to what the message to Kira said.
Wall she call her family to live with her now and what kira massage say ?
the world will never know as Alejandra didn’t stop to read the message from kira. she did not even provide a chance for it to be sent.
I hope charity parents story come very soon.
if it were to come it would be sometime in 2026 but its not a planned out story at this time and there are a few other stories i have mapped out and in the pipeline that would come first.
0) early one, nice. (I was about to go to bed, but this is more important)
1) “an innocent-looking bundle that now carried a whole future zipped inside.” if she’s about to do what I think she’s about to do, it really will change her life
2) “her cheap sneakers padding over floors she used to mop on her hands and knees.” she’s still gonna be cleaning floors as far as we know, at least for now.
3) “She didn’t bother greeting her yet. She wanted to see how long it would take the tiny girl to crawl out on her own” I’d imagine a few guardians would play “games” like this, Sara’s done similar
4) “Of course the latest model,” yeah, obviously
5) “the little trembling insect that used to be Miss Stevens, now just Patrona, as the paperwork” Littles are still not insects, they are mammals.
6.1) “The little ones don’t have property. Yes or no, Patrona?” Legally no
6.2) “You yourself used that to screw people like me. Well now, the same rules make you mine. So think about it — whose phone is this, huh?” that’s gonna be one salty wound by the time Al’s done/
7) “her phone, her link to the world that had forgotten her so easily. It might as well have been a gold-plated lock on her cage now” it’s funny how quickly a symbol can change.
8) “She wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair. That she didn’t mean for her world to turn out like this.” she’s right, but that changes nothing.
9) “0614. Her birthday,” This is the first canonically confirmed date of birth, 14th June 2005
10) “Each soft tap of her thumb was a tiny thunderclap in the silence of the room.” we do know that those noises are louder for Littles.
11) “Guardian training in Mexico was clear about this: consistency. Firmness. And when they obey, gentle affection to bind them tight.” I like the specific detail about their carrot and stick model,
12) “And now? She watched the tiny thing quivering on her desk and thought, Now who’s the stray dog?” seems more like Al’s grudge is with Charity’s parents than Charity herself, though Charity would still deserve some ire.
13) “You don’t belong here either, Patrona. Not anymore.” well, she does, she’s just been cheated out of it by her biology and the bent laws.
14) “She popped the SIM tray out of the fancy phone. A small plastic piece, so tiny, so stupid, yet the key to a whole identity. She bent it neatly between her fingers until it snapped. Dropped the halves into the wastebasket by the desk with a soft plink” fucking brutal (but also kinda dumb, there was almost definetly useful information still on that,)
15) “Her real world, laid over Charity’s perfect one.” Charity’s world wasn’t any less real than Alejandra’s
16) “She changed the lock code. She wiped the last backup from the cloud. She even tapped out a quick message to her own mother, a photo of the fancy phone’s screen attached (Look, mama. I did good. I’ll send more soon.)” she’s doing a thorough job scrubbing it clean, no wonder they hired her
17) “You want to call your Kira, sí? Go ahead.” She held up the phone, wagging it teasingly between two fingers before slipping it into her jeans pocket, far out of reach. “Pero, Patrona… remember. The number’s gone. All gone. This phone’s mine now. And so are you.” Al’s busting out all the power moves here, (if she wasn’t doing it to Charity, I’d be more against it)
0) being friday i figured i would drop it early when I got up.
1) I guess it depends what you think shes going to do.
2) Probably a safe bet that the will do some kind of labor for her job.
3) Although with Alejandra its not so much a game as in culturally how they view littles is different.
4) Charity would have nothing less. She seems like a i need hte latest model every year.
5) She didn’t mean literally insect. she was more drawing parallels.
6) That is very much true. Property can’t own property. Thats pretty much a universal rule.
6.2) That probably felt pretty good for her. Charity is not the greatest person to work for that’s for sure.
7) Thats true in reality as well. But I do enjoy how symbolism can in different light be viewed so differently.
8) Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. Its kind of like with Cindy though. HOw much is she sorry for and how much is just this shouldn’t be happening to me as I’m a stevens.
9) really? the first? I wasn’t aware of that when I wrote it. I figured someone had one mentioned before.
10) yes, although the digital clicking of these keyboard noises can be. loud if its quiet. Especially in a situation like this.
11) Yup, I wanted to highlight that she is educated in what to do based on the Mexican system isn’t the same as the American system. Not 1 for 1.Similar but obviously cultural and legal differences exist from country to country.
12) It more of a generalized to the Stevens family. THey all had their share of things. Charity also could have stepped in and stopped it at any chance. She was Alejandra’s boss as well. But she is getting the blame for everything as she is the representative. Kind of like in customer service when someone is making a complaint. Its not your fault but you’re the vessel that is getting the full experience of this persons ire.
13) True, from Charity’s perspective she would be cheated it out. From Alejandra’s perspective and how Mexico works. Being a little Charity and her family would have been reduced at the start. Never given the chance. So from her perspective they were always living a fake life that was unattainable for Charity’s kind. As littles cant have wealth themselves. As they aren’t people. A little with a bank account isn’t possible.
14) Maybe, but Alejandra is looking at it from street life perspective, from a undocumented perspective. She doesn’t want things traced back to her. She doesn’t want prior identity or owners data to be anywhere near it or in her possession.
15) Well it wasn’t that it was real its that to Alejandra since charity was a little. A little shouldn’t be able to walk around pretending to be human. As its not legal in her eyes. So its not that charity’s was less real but it was a existence that shouldn’t have been allowed to occur from her perspective as her culture is different. Not that she doesn’t understand the American culture. But it is a distinct belief set.
16) Well lets just say Alejandra has done what she needed to do to survive. This isn’t her first rodeo with a phone that isn’t hers. She knows how to scrub it clean and get it ready for someone to use and not know its been stolen.
17) I agree but if it was someone else she probably would be acting different as well. Charity earned the behavior and treatment she is getting. If alejandra found Jordan for example. She would probably behave differently with him. He’d still be a little but she wouldn’t act the exact same.
1) Take as much of Charity’s and the Stevens’ wealth as she can without consequence
3) I guess so.
5) I know, it just bugs me.
6.2) cathartic pleasure
7) it’s a good story telling tool.
8) indeed, and the bridges she’s burnt are coming back to bite her.
9) Nope never, we know a few months of birth and that Jordan’s isn’t 15th September 1996, but this is the first date of birth confirmation.
11) It’s a good expansion on Guardian law.
12) Yeah, she wouldn’t be innocent but is paying for the sins of 2-3 other people as well as her own.
13 & 15) She’s not the first person to think a pre-infected Little is living a lie, I’m convinced Mexico’s actions would have led to the conspiracy theories Jordan believed,
14) I see, can’t take everything and cover her ass.
16) Not gonna lie, that kinda makes me lose some sympathy for her.
0) was this the last chapter for now? i assumed it would be but have been busy this week and haven’t seen where it’s confirmed lol
no this is only like halfwayish through this story. I have a bit over 100 chapter written.
sweet. wasn’t sure if there’d be a break at 50 or not
nope we’re rolling through to the end of Charity up until the last moment. I may even attach a couple extra at the end as an epilogue/interlude.
Did she delete everything in the phone?
yes
I still am unsure how to feel lol part of me wants to think Al isnt a good person but at the same time as it’s been pointed out in the comments, she’s pretty much had to fight her whole time in the states so this could be the first time she’s had a upper hand and is just enjoying it for now. She may be a good person when it all wears off. Might even be influenced by other guardians to treat charity differently than how she would in Mexico. Idk. Look forward to seeing
Thats kind of the goal to make people trying to decipher Alejandra. As like most characters I try to give them realism where just like people in real life. You can’t really define people as 100% good or 100% bad. As people are messy and complicated and its a sum of everything they are.
I’m not sure if your are deliberately holding this back or I’m just to much of a conspiracy nut, but I get the feeling that Alejandra had this planned for quite some time and has just been biding her time waiting for Charity to succumb to Smallara.
I’m sure the story will reveal this soon, but I’m also wondering what other windfalls Alejandra is going to reap from Charity’s assets.
Was she the last employee of this estate? If not, eventually others are going to wonder what happened to Charity.
I hope you have some kind of closure for Sara. She at least needs to know what fate befell Charity.
There is no consipiracy theory. Alejandra didnt plan anything. She was just working her job.
Alejandra wasn’t the last employee. They just had limited staff.
As far as if Sara gets closure you will have to keep on reading to find out if she finds out.
Maybe its because I worked with people from all over the world that used the laws of the US and waited in massive lines and had to wait for ever. Many from Mexico and other central American country’s. And when we where working, they would be the ones complaining about people illegally messing up the system for everyone else.
With that context I don’t feel bad for Ml at all other then her parents letting her risk her life crossing the border to send money home. Sounds selfish.
Don’t know where are form but could you upload the next page 5 am Newyork time