Twenty years earlier. Santa Esperanza Orphanage, on the outskirts of Tijuana. The backyard smelled of rust and broken promises. Santiago was only twelve then, a thin boy with dirty fingernails and a heart full of anger, crouched behind a heap of scrap metal as he struggled to shape a piece of copper. “It looks ugly,” he muttered in frustration. Ten-year-old Valeria, with uneven braids and an oversized secondhand dress, knelt beside him and pulled something from her pocket. It was a fragment of blue sea glass she had hidden inside her shoe during a field trip. “Put this in the middle,” she told him. Santiago looked at her with a seriousness far beyond his age and spoke the words that would bind him forever: “When I grow up, I’m going to be rich. Very rich. And I’ll buy you a real ring, with a huge diamond.” Valeria wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want a diamond. I like this one. It’s the color of your eyes.” That day, Santiago made a solemn promise: “I will marry you. When I am rich, I promise you.” She smiled and answered, “I will wait for you.”
In front of the screen, the billionaire’s hands shook. She had kept the ring for twenty years. He had become one of the richest men in the country; magazines praised him, and he had built an empire from nothing. Yet during all that time, he had never tried to find her. He had buried that vulnerable boy beneath layers of ambition and success. Did she even know who he was? Was she there for revenge, or for money? True to his calculating nature, Santiago decided not to confront her right away. He would test her.
The next morning, he left an old book on the coffee table: The Little Prince, its spine worn with age. It was the same story they used to read together in secret in the orphanage library. Through the camera, he watched Valeria discover it. Her hand trembled over the cover. She lifted it slowly, pressed it against her chest with her eyes closed, then carefully placed it on the sofa cushion where he used to lie down. She knew.
The tests continued. Santiago deliberately dropped a cheap mint candy onto his important papers, identical to the ones they had stolen from the orphanage director’s office. Valeria placed it in the center of her desk. Days later, Santiago returned home to find a bowl of soup waiting on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t gourmet. It was plain chicken broth, overly peppery with too little meat. Exactly the same comforting taste they had shared on cold Tijuana nights. Santiago sat down and finished the entire bowl, feeling the wall of ice around his heart begin to crack.
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