“And after seeing her father?”
Carmela lowered her gaze.
“She hasn’t spoken at all.”
Dolores glanced out the window.
Salomé stood alone in the yard.
Silent.
Isolated.
“What did she whisper?” Dolores asked.
“No one knows,” Carmela replied softly. “But whatever it was… it’s breaking her from the inside.”
FIVE YEARS EARLIER — THE NIGHT
The Fuentes house had been silent.
Sara put three-year-old Salomé to bed early. The little girl hugged her teddy bear, unaware of what was coming.
Ramiro sat in the living room, drinking his fourth glass of whiskey.
He had lost his job that week.
Twenty years at the carpentry shop — gone overnight.
Sara’s voice echoed from the kitchen, tense and furious.
“I told you not to contact me again. What you did is unforgivable. If you don’t fix this, I’m going to talk.”
Ramiro stepped into the doorway.
“Who were you talking to?”
“Nobody. Go to sleep. You’ve had enough.”
He wanted to argue.
But alcohol won.
He collapsed onto the couch.
And slept.
What happened next, he would not remember.
But someone would.
Salomé woke to the sound of a door.
She stepped into the hallway.
From the shadows, she saw a figure enter the house.
A man she knew.
A man who wore blue shirts.
A man who brought her sweets.
Sara screamed.
Then silence.
Salomé hid in the closet as the man in blue walked toward her sleeping father.
THE CRACKS IN THE CASE
Dolores spent the night reviewing hundreds of pages.
Everything pointed to Ramiro.
But small cracks appeared.
The neighbor, Pedro Sánchez, first described seeing “a man” leaving the house.
Three days later, he specified: Ramiro.
Why the change?
The forensic results returned in record time — seventy-two hours — unusually fast.
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