In the living room, Ramiro Fuentes was drinking his fourth glass of whiskey. He’d lost his job that week. The carpentry shop where he’d worked for 20 years had closed without warning. At his age, he didn’t know how to start over. Sara was on the phone in the kitchen. Her voice was a furious whisper. “I told you not to contact me anymore. What you did is unforgivable. If you don’t fix this, I’m going to talk. I don’t care what you threaten me with. » She hung up violently and saw Ramiro watching her from the doorway.
Who were you talking to? No one. Go to sleep. You’ve had enough to drink. Ramiro wanted to ask more questions, but the alcohol was already clouding his thoughts. He slumped down on the living room sofa and closed his eyes. Within minutes, he was quickly asleep. What happened next, Ramiro wouldn’t remember, but someone else would. Salomé woke up to the sound of a door. She got out of bed and walked into the hallway. From the shadows, she saw something her three-year-old eyes couldn’t understand, but that her memory would forever hold.
A figure entered the house. A man the little girl knew well. A man who always wore blue shirts and brought his candy when he visited. Sara screamed, then silence. Little Salomé hid in the hallway closet, trembling, as the man in the blue shirt walked toward where her father slept. Dolores spent the entire night reviewing the Fuentes case file. Hundreds of pages, photographs she preferred not to remember, testimonies, expert reports—everything pointed to Ramiro: his fingerprints, his clothes, his lack of a solid alibi. But there were cracks, small, almost invisible, but they were there.
The first witness, a neighbor named Pedro Sánchez, initially stated that he saw a man leaving the house at 11 pm Three days later, in a second statement, he specified that it was Ramiro. Why the change? Who pressured him? The physical evidence was processed in record time. Forensic analysis normally took weeks. In this case, the results arrived in 72 hours, just in time for the arrest. The prosecutor in charge of the case was Aurelio Sánchez.
The surname matched that of the neighbor who had witnessed the case. Coincidence or family connection? Dolores looked for information about Aurelio Sánchez. What she found deeply disturbed her. Aurelio was no longer a prosecutor. He had been promoted to judge three years earlier, just after securing Ramiro’s conviction. His career took off thanks to this case, which he had resolved with exemplary efficiency, according to the newspapers of the time. But there was more. Aurelio Sánchez had business connections with Gonzalo Fuentes, Ramiro’s younger brother. Together they had bought several properties in the last five years.
Properties that once belonged to the Fuentes family. Dolores dialed a number on her phone. “Carlos, I need you to investigate Gonzalo Fuentes’s business dealings. Everything—every property, every transaction, every partner. And I need to know if Sara Fuentes knew something she shouldn’t have. » Gonzalo Fuentes arrived at the Santa María home in a luxury black car that contrasted sharply with the modesty of the place. He wore an impeccable suit and a blue tie, always blue. Carmela saw him enter and felt a chill run down her spine.
Leave a Comment