She told me she’d discovered something about Gonzalo, Ramiro’s brother, a fraud involving their parents’ will. What else did she tell me? That Gonzalo had been harassing her since before they were married.
Ramiro never knew. Sara didn’t want to cause problems between the siblings, but in recent months Gonzalo had become more aggressive.
He threatened her if she didn’t keep quiet about the will. Why did she never report this to the police? Beatriz lowered her gaze.
My cousin Aurelio visited me two days after Sara died. He told me that if I opened my mouth, he would investigate my taxes and find irregularities I didn’t know about.
He told me he could destroy my life with one phone call. I was afraid, Dolores. I was afraid and I kept quiet. And I’ve lived with that guilt for five years. Would you be willing to testify now?
Beatriz looked out the window where the sun was beginning to set. Sara was my best friend. I let her innocent husband be condemned out of cowardice.
If testifying now can fix some of the things I did wrong, I’m willing. Dolores left Beatriz’s house with a recording of her testimony and renewed hope.
But when he got to his car he noticed something strange, a black vehicle parked at the end of the street, the same model he had seen in front of his house days before.
She pretended not to notice and drove home. The black car followed her at a distance. Dolores changed her route, taking side streets.
The car was following her. Her heart was pounding, but she remained calm. In her years as a lawyer, she had faced worse threats.
Finally, it stopped in a well-lit area in front of a police station. The black car drove past, but something fell from its window as it accelerated.
Dolores waited a few minutes before leaving, picked up the object from the floor, a religious medal of the kind that mothers give to their children for protection.
It had his initials engraved on it.
Mr. Martín Reyes. He was following her. Not Gonzalo’s men. Martín. Dolores looked around for the black car, but it had disappeared.
However, now she had one certainty. Martín was alive, he was close, and he was trying to communicate. The question was, why wasn’t he showing himself openly?
Who was she so afraid of that she preferred to remain in the shadows for five years? The answer would come sooner than she expected. That night Dolores couldn’t sleep.
He gathered all the pieces on his table: Salome’s drawing, Martin’s medal, the forged will, Beatriz’s engraving, the connections between Gonzalo and Aurelio.
Everything pointed in one direction. Ramiro was innocent. Gonzalo had attacked Sara to silence her.
Aurelio had manipulated the case to protect his partner, but something was missing: the direct testimony of someone who had seen what happened that night.
Salome couldn’t speak. Martin was hiding. Without an eyewitness, everything else was circumstantial.
The clock read 3 a.m., less than 30 hours remained until the execution.
Then Dolores’s phone rang, an unknown number. Mrs. Medina. The voice was male, trembling. Who’s speaking?
My name is Martín. Martín Reyes. I know he’s been looking for me, and I know time is running out. Dolores felt her heart stop. Where is he? Why is he hiding?
Because if they find me, they’ll eliminate me, just like they tried to do five years ago. But I can’t stay silent any longer.
They’re going to execute an innocent man, and I have the evidence to save him. What evidence?
A long silence. The night Sara died, I was there. I saw everything, and I saw something else that no one knows, something that changes everything you think you know about this case.
What did you see? Sara Fuentes didn’t die that night, Mrs. Medina. I got her out of that house before Gonzalo finished her off.
Sara is alive and has been waiting for this moment for five years. And Dolores couldn’t process what she had just heard.
Sara Viva, who spent five years in hiding while her husband awaited execution, said, “That’s impossible.”
There was a funeral, a death certificate. The body, the body was so badly damaged that identification was made through dental records, Martin interrupted.
Records that Aurelio Sánchez commissioned to be falsified. The body they buried wasn’t Sara’s. Whose was it then? A woman with no family who died that same week in a hospital.
Aurelio has contacts at the morgue. He made the switch. It was all planned to bury the case along with the alleged victim.
Dolores needed to see it to believe it. Where is Sara now? Close by, but I can’t tell you where over the phone.
We don’t know who might be listening. I need you to come to my mother’s house in San Jerónimo tomorrow. I’ll explain everything there. Time is running out, Martín.
There are less than 30 hours left. I know, that’s why I decided to speak. Sara wanted to wait until she had all the legal evidence, but there’s no time left.
If Ramiro dies, Gonzalo wins for good. And Sara has sacrificed too much to allow that.
Dolores hung up the phone, her hands trembling. If this was true, it was the most extraordinary case of her career.
A woman who faked her death to protect her daughter. An innocent husband convicted of a crime that never happened.
A brother willing to destroy everything out of greed packed a small suitcase. Tomorrow he would travel to San Jerónimo. Tomorrow he would learn the whole truth.
What he didn’t know was that someone had intercepted the call. In his cell, Ramiro Fuentes slept for the first time in years without nightmares.
His daughter’s words had ignited something in him: hope.
But that night, sleep brought back memories he had blocked for five years. He saw himself on his couch at home, drunk, about to pass out.
She heard voices, Sara’s voice, first calm, then frightened, and another voice, a voice she knew well. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved in this, Sara. I warned you,” said Gonzalo.
Ramiro tried to move in his sleep. He tried to get up to defend his wife, but his body wouldn’t respond.
The alcohol had paralyzed him. He heard a bang, a scream, silence.
Then footsteps approaching him, a hand placing something in his, the cold of metal. When you wake up, this will be over, and you’ll be the perfect culprit, brother.
Ramiro woke up drenched in sweat, screaming. The guards rushed to his cell thinking he was trying to hurt himself, but Ramiro was just repeating a phrase.
Now I remember. Now I remember everything. My brother was my brother. I heard his voice. He put the gun in my hands while I slept.
The younger guard looked at his partner
Do you think he’s telling the truth? The veteran shook his head. Everyone tells the truth when the end is near, but that doesn’t matter anymore. It mattered more than he imagined.
At the Santa María home, Carmela watched Salomé with concern. Since she stopped speaking, the girl communicated only through drawings.
He drew obsessively, filling page after page with the same image. Carmela gave him a new box of crayons.
Can you show me what you see in your dreams, little one?
Salomé picked up the crayons and began to draw. This time the drawing was different, more detailed, as if five years of maturity allowed her to express what she couldn’t before.
She drew the house, the room, a figure on the floor, another standing with a blue shirt, but she added something new, a half-open door in the background and behind it another small figure, a girl with yellow hair, herself observing everything.
And in the corner of the drawing, something Carmela did not expect: a hand sticking out of the window of the house, as if someone were helping the figure on the ground to escape.
“What is this, Salome?” Carmela asked, pointing at the hand. The girl wrote a single word beneath the drawing.
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