Chapter Text
The first and most important thing you must know about the Sainz family is that their home was built on a foundation of petrol, passion, and pristine white walls.
The second thing is that I, at the age of three, became the sole reason one of those walls was temporarily defiled.
I don’t actually remember the day I decorated the Sainz family’s living-room wall. Not really. I was three—too young for memories, too young for sense, old enough for chaos. Most of what I know comes from the stories Mamá Sainz and Blanca love to retell, each time with more exasperation, more laughter, and more affection than the last. It was a legend, and I was its tiny, destructive protagonist.
On that particular afternoon, the sun lay warm and heavy over the terracotta tile floors, and the house was steeped in a deep, almost sacred silence.
It was the wrong kind of silence.
Eight-year-old Carlos Sainz Jr. paused in the doorway to the living room, his brow furrowed. His mother was in the kitchen, humming a flamenco tune as she chopped vegetables for dinner. His father was out at the rally workshop. His older sister, Blanca, was at school.
Which left only one variable unaccounted for.
“Denise,” he muttered under his breath, the name a familiar sigh.
He didn’t hear her—he never could—but he felt the air shift the way it always did when she was up to something. It was a faint vibration of mischief, a subtle disruption in the household’s stillness. He had become an expert in reading the Denise-shaped quiet.
He followed the bad feeling down the hallway, his small sneakers silent on the cool tiles.
And there, he found her.
Tiny, barefoot Denise Merhi stood proudly in the center of the living room, a look of fierce concentration on her face. She was clutching one of Mamá Sainz’s very expensive, imported red lipsticks in her chubby fist like it was a crayon gifted from the gods themselves. Her jet-black hair was tied into two crooked pigtails, one of which had already sagged loose. Her little tongue poked out from between her lips as she dragged the waxy crimson stick across the pristine white wall in wide, determined strokes.
It looked… vaguely like a heart.
If you squinted.
And backed up six meters.
And maybe prayed to every saint in Spain.
Carlos stopped dead. His own heart performed a violent leap from his chest directly into his stomach, leaving a cold, hollow space behind.
“…Mierda.”
Denise, attuned to the vibration of his footsteps through the floor, turned. Her dark, expressive eyes lit up, sparkling with triumph. She pointed a sticky, red-stained finger at her creation with pure, unadulterated joy.
Look! her entire being screamed. Look what I made!
She didn’t need sound to communicate—her excitement was a deafening, silent shout.
Carlos marched toward her, his hands flailing in frantic, clumsy Spanish Sign Language. His baby signs were unpolished but earnest. No. No drawing. No wall. Mamá angry. Big trouble!
Denise blinked up at him, her lips twitching. She found his panic amusing.
Then, with deliberate slowness, she turned back to the wall and added another bold, red stroke right through the center of her heart.
Carlos dragged a hand down his face, a gesture far too weary for his eight years.
“Deni, no,” he said aloud, the sound harsh in the quiet room, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. He tapped her wrist gently but firmly. Stop. Bad.
A silent giggle shook her small shoulders. She had always been mesmerized by his face—the way his expressions moved like a storm, the exaggerated, fascinating shapes his mouth made when he was upset. Today, his long lashes fluttered in frantic panic, and something in her tiny, chaotic brain decided this was the funniest thing she had ever seen.
She reached up with her lipstick-stained hand to pat his hair, to soothe him.
He jerked back, horrified. “Deni!”
He should have been angry, but instead, a weak, hysterical sound almost escaped him—a laugh choked by terror. But then he pictured his mother’s face, the devastation in her eyes when she saw her beautiful wall, and the panic sucked all the humor straight out of him.
He inspected the heart—its smearing, its lopsided, drunken unevenness—and he realized instantly, with the cold clarity of a military strategist:
Blanca, for all her drama, wouldn’t draw this.
Roberto wasn’t home.
Mamá sure as hell didn’t draw it.
Meaning:
This disaster belonged entirely to Denise.
He needed a miracle.
Or—
His eyes darted around the room. A marker.
He sprinted to the kitchen, yanked open the junk drawer, and grabbed a thick, black permanent marker. Mamá looked over from the counter, her knife stilling.
“¿Qué haces, Carlitos?” What are you doing?
“Nothing!” he squeaked, his voice cracking with guilt, and bolted back to the crime scene.
When he returned, Denise had, somehow, made the heart look even worse, adding a few speculative red squiggles at the bottom.
“Okay, okay…” he muttered, kneeling before the wall like a priest at an altar.
She watched him with wide, curious eyes as he uncapped the marker with a decisive pop. She loved watching his hands when he drew; she could feel the faint vibrations through the wall when he pressed down hard.
Carlos took a deep, steadying breath and pressed the marker to the wall.
Over her red, smeared heart, he began to draw:
A circle. A line for a visor. A chin guard. Two bold stripes down the side.
A racing helmet—crooked, uneven, childish, but undeniably, unmistakably a helmet.
Denise’s mouth formed a perfect, silent O. She began to bounce on the balls of her feet, her excitement palpable.
And just as he leaned forward to fix a wobbly line—
She grabbed a fistful of his soft, brown hair.
And climbed him.
“Denise—! ¡Ay—!”
He wobbled violently, still clutching the marker, the toddler now dangling from his shoulders like a determined, sticky koala. The helmet line shot off at a wild, jagged angle. This was, somehow, objectively worse than before.
That was the moment Blanca arrived home.
She froze in the doorway, her school bag slung over one shoulder. Her eyes scanned the scene: the red-and-black mural, the guilty marker in Carlos’s hand, the toddler using his head as a climbing gym. She sighed deeply, a sound of profound, sisterly resignation, and placed a hand on her hip.
“Oh my god. Carlitos. What did you do?”
“It’s not me!” he cried, trying to peel Denise off his head. “Help—she’s stuck—!”
Blanca groaned and waded into the chaos, lifting Denise off his shoulders with practiced ease. Denise immediately latched onto Blanca’s clean white school shirt, leaving a perfect, crimson handprint right over her heart.
“Perfect,” Blanca muttered, holding the toddler at arm's length. “I always wanted a shirt that looks murdered.”
Carlos, free at last, capped the marker and stepped back to survey their handiwork.
On the wall:
Denise’s chaotic red heart, now encased in his crooked, frantic black helmet.
If you didn’t know better, if you viewed it with a generous and squinting eye, it almost looked intentional. Like a piece of very, very modern art.
He exhaled, a puff of shaky relief.
“There. Now it’s art.”
Before Blanca could retort, the sharp, familiar click of heels echoed on the tiles behind them.
Mamá Sainz stepped into the room.
She stopped cold.
Her eyes, sharp and discerning, performed a slow, devastating scan:
The wall.
The heart.
The helmet.
Carlos, holding the smoking-gun marker.
Denise, covered in lipstick like a tiny, triumphant vandal.
Blanca, holding the toddler like a contaminated biological object.
Silence, thick and heavy as a blanket.
Carlos swallowed. Hard. The sound was deafening.
“Mamá…”
Her gaze, when it landed on him, was sharp enough to cut glass.
“¿Pero qué…?” What on earth…?
Denise, sensing the attention, pointed proudly at the wall, then at Carlos, then at herself, claiming her share of the credit.
Blanca raised a hand, like a soldier in a war room. “Permission to blame the toddler?”
“Denied,” Mamá said instantly, her voice low.
Carlos deflated.
Blanca sighed.
Denise beamed.
Mamá pressed her fingers to her temples, as if staving off a migraine. “Why the wall, Carlitos?”
He could have told the truth. He could have blamed Denise, blamed gravity, blamed the inherent chaos of the universe.
Instead, he lifted his chin, meeting her gaze with a bravery he did not feel. He channeled every artist who had ever been misunderstood.
“Es arte.” It’s art.
Mamá stared at him. Then at the wall. Then back at him. Her stern expression wavered. A muscle in her jaw twitched. Then—slowly, reluctantly—the stern line of her mouth softened into something perilously close to amusement. She shook her head, a puff of air escaping her lips.
“Blanca, get the cleaning spray and the paint touch-up can from the garage. Carlos, wash your hands. Denise…”
She moved forward and lifted the toddler from Blanca’s arms.
Denise instantly wrapped herself around Mamá like a koala, burying her face in her neck, red lipstick smearing generously across the shoulder of Mamá’s silk blouse.
“…mi niña,” Mamá whispered, her voice now pure tenderness. She tapped Denise’s cheek gently until the girl looked at her. Mamá pointed to the wall, then mimed drawing on a piece of paper. “Next time, paper. ¿Sí?”
Denise nodded, a picture of solemn understanding.
An hour later, there was no evidence left. Blanca had scrubbed away the lipstick, and Mamá, with a few expert strokes of a small paint roller, had restored the wall to its original, blinding white. The heart and the helmet were gone, sealed beneath a fresh layer of paint as if they had never existed at all. It was a secret now, a story with no physical proof.
Carlos, seeing his chance for escape, turned to leave—only for Denise to reach for him with both arms, her little hands opening and closing.
He hesitated, looking from her to his mother.
Mamá’s eyes were soft. She lowered Denise gently into his arms.
Instantly, the toddler tucked her head into the crook of his neck, her fingers curling tightly into the fabric of his shirt. The frantic energy drained from her small body, melting against him with a trust so complete it was terrifying. Her breathing slowed, deepened.
She fell asleep.
Carlos blinked, startled by the sudden weight and warmth. Then, carefully—awkwardly, as only an eight-year-old boy can be—he shifted his stance to support her better. One hand came up to settle on her back, holding her secure. His cheek brushed against her loose, silky pigtail.
To Carlos, it meant nothing profound. It was just a toddler who’d run out of energy after a long day of artistic terrorism. A simple, biological shutdown. The wall was clean. The crisis was averted. It was over.
Denise, in the deep well of toddler-sleep, clutched his shirt and murmured soft, silent nonsense, vibrations of contentment that only she could feel.
Mamá paused in the doorway, watching them. Something warm and unnamable flickered in her expression as she saw them—Carlos standing steady and gentle, Denise curled trustingly into him, the freshly painted wall gleaming behind them.
Just two children.
A secret buried under fresh paint.
A helmet drawn over a heart, now known only to memory.
A moment that meant nothing then.
A moment that would mean everything later.
“Ay, mis niños,” she whispered to herself, a secret smile touching her lips as she glanced one last time at the pristine wall. “You two will be trouble one day.”