He needed to know the truth first. He needed to know where he was going. Without saying goodbye to his partners, ignoring his lawyer’s calls, who was shouting his name in the restaurant, Hector walked quickly toward the main exit. The game had changed. The past had just crashed into his present. The night in Monterrey was hot and oppressive. Hector practically ran out of the restaurant. The valet parking attendant barely had time to bring his charcoal-black armored SUV. His private security driver opened the back door for him, as usual.
“Get out, Roberto, I’m driving today,” Hector ordered curtly. The security guard blinked, puzzled. Hector never drove. “But, Mr. Villalobos, it’s Segur’s protocol. Get out of my truck now,” Hector roared. The driver obeyed instantly. Hector climbed into the driver’s seat, started the B8 engine with a muffled roar, and accelerated sharply, leaving behind the golden lights and luxurious storefronts of the main avenue. He turned the wheel toward the back alley of the restaurant. He arrived just in time.
In the flickering light of a broken streetlamp, he saw Anayeli come out of the service door. She walked quickly, hunched over from the weight of the two large plastic bags she was carrying. She had no purse or jacket, just that worn uniform and some worn-out sneakers that squeaked against the wet asphalt. Héctor turned off the truck’s headlights. At a safe distance of 50 meters, he began to follow her. The journey was silent torture. Anayeli walked five blocks until she reached a rusty, vandalized bus stop.
Hector stopped the truck at the corner, hidden in the shadows. He saw her hugging herself in the darkness. He saw her rummaging through her clear plastic bags. Hector squinted to see better. In the light from passing headlights, he noticed something strange about the trash Nayeli had collected. It wasn’t just food scraps. In the second bag were crushed cardboard boxes, empty glass jars, and what looked like IV tubing salvaged from the pharmacy’s recycling bin on the corner.
What on earth was a former elite nurse doing with discarded medical waste? An old city bus, belching black smoke from its exhaust, screeched to a halt in front of the bus stop. Nayeli climbed aboard, dragging the bags. Hector pressed the accelerator. The imposing armored SUV began to follow the dilapidated public transport vehicle. The landscape changed dramatically. They left behind the illuminated skyscrapers, the mansions with armed guards, and the pristine boulevards. The bus began to climb the steep streets of the outskirts.
The asphalt vanished, replaced by dirt, deep potholes, and starving stray dogs scavenging through the garbage. Hector felt a lump in his throat. The contrast was brutal. He slept in Egyptian silk sheets. The woman to whom he had sworn eternal love traveled at night toward utter misery. The bus finally stopped at the highest and darkest part of the neighborhood, a labyrinth of half-built houses piled one on top of the other on the hillside.
The walls were made of cracked, exposed brick, unpainted. The roofs were simple sheets of rusted metal held up by old tires to keep the wind from blowing them away. Nayeli got off the bus. The street was too narrow and steep for Hector’s truck. She turned off the engine and unlocked the door. She knew she was breaking every safety rule. A man with a Patec Philips watch on his wrist walking alone through that neighborhood at midnight was a moving target.
But fear wasn’t in his mind at that moment. There was only the desperate urge to know what had become of Nayeli. He got out of the car, his Italian shoes crunching through the wet mud. He closed the door quietly and began to follow her on foot, keeping his distance, hugging the shadows of the unfinished walls. The smell of dampness, of burnt wood and sewage, filled the air. Héctor’s breathing was heavy. He saw Nayeli’s silhouette struggling up the steep slope, stopping every now and then to catch her breath.
Her knees trembled from the effort of carrying the bags, but she didn’t stop. There was an urgency in her steps, a fierce determination. Finally, Nayeli stopped in front of the most dilapidated house on the entire block. It was a small structure almost sunken into the ground. The door was nothing more than a dented sheet of metal, secured with a thin chain. A warm, yellowish, and very dim light filtered through the cracks in the door. Héctor hid behind a concrete block wall barely 10 meters away.
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