Chapter 10 - The Guard Who LiedTomás lifted the metal shutter just six inches.
Ramiro collapsed under it.
Blood streaked his face. His jacket was torn. One sleeve hung dark and wet from shoulder to wrist. He rolled onto the floor with a groan as Lucía slammed the shutter down behind him.
Dr. Salas dropped to her knees.
“Where is Mateo?” she demanded.
Ramiro coughed. “Alive.”
The word punched air back into my lungs.
“For now,” he added.
Dr. Salas cut open his sleeve. “What happened?”
“They took the house. Not all of it. Enough.” He winced as she pressed cloth to the wound. “Boss got out through the lower garage with six men. He sent me after you.”
“Why?”
Ramiro looked at me.
“Because he thinks I’m the traitor.”
The room went dead quiet.
Lucía’s knife lifted.
Tomás’s grip tightened on the bat.
I stared at Ramiro. “Are you?”
He gave a tired laugh. “That depends who tells the story.”
Dr. Salas did not stop treating him, but her face changed. “Explain.”
Ramiro closed his eyes.
“Twelve years ago, I was Rafael Castellanos’s driver.”
Lucía swore.
I stepped back.
Ramiro opened his eyes and looked directly at me.
“I drove the car the night your father died.”
The print shop seemed to lose all air.
My father, Gabriel Vargas—the man I had only learned existed hours earlier—had died in an attack. And this man had been there.
I wanted to hit him.
I wanted to run.
I wanted my grandmother.
Ramiro did not defend himself.
“I didn’t know Isabel was pregnant,” he said. “I didn’t know Rafael planned to kill his own daughter’s lover. He told me we were bringing her home.”
“And when you found out?” I asked.
His eyes shone.
“I froze.”
That was worse than if he had said he fought and lost.
He froze.
Like the crowd at the river.
Like everyone who watched someone drown.
“Gabriel pulled Isabel from the car,” Ramiro said. “Men started shooting. I saw her fall. I saw him stand over her. And I sat behind the wheel with my hands on the steering wheel like a coward.”
I could hear my heart beating.
“Then Esperanza came out with a shotgun.”
Dr. Salas looked up.
Ramiro laughed softly, painfully. “Your grandmother was five feet tall and looked like judgment itself. She fired into the air, dragged Isabel inside the clinic, and screamed at me to choose what kind of man I wanted to be before God wrote it down.”
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“I drove the wounded away from the clinic. Castellanos men. Vargas men. Anyone who could still breathe. I lied. I told Rafael the baby died. Later, I went to Mateo and told him where his brother was buried.”
“And Vargas let you live?”
“No,” Ramiro said. “He beat me until I wished he wouldn’t. Then Esperanza stood between us.”
My grandmother again.
Always standing between men and their worst selves.
“She said killing me would not raise Gabriel. She said making me live with the truth might save someone else one day.”
Ramiro swallowed.
“So I served Mateo. Not because I was good. Because Esperanza decided I was not finished becoming good.”
I looked at his bleeding arm.
“Did you poison her?”
His face crumpled.
“No.”
“Did you tell Rafael where she lived?”
“No.”
“Then why does Vargas think you’re the traitor?”
Ramiro reached into his jacket with his good hand. Lucía moved closer with the knife.
Slowly, he removed a folded paper.
“Because someone planted this in my room.”
Dr. Salas took it.
It was a bank receipt.
A payment from a Castellanos shell account.
To Ramiro Ortega.
Lucía looked at him coldly. “Convenient.”
“It is not mine.”
“People always say that.”
Ramiro looked at me.
“You don’t have to believe me. But believe this: the traitor is close enough to Mateo to know his private tunnels, close enough to Esperanza to know her medicine, and close enough to you to know where you slept after she died.”
I went still.
“Where I slept?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know they knew?”
He reached into his pocket again and removed a small photograph.
It showed me asleep under the church steps.
Taken from across the street.
On the back, someone had written:
WAIT UNTIL THE RIVER.
My mouth went dry.
The river had not been an accident.
Vargas falling in had not been random.
They had not discovered me because I saved him.
They had arranged it so I would.
“Why?” I whispered.
Lucía looked at the scanned ledger glowing on the screen.
“Because now the whole city knows the dead boy saved Mateo Vargas.”
Dr. Salas finished bandaging Ramiro and stood slowly.
“They turned Aurelio into a symbol.”
The front shutter rattled violently.
Everyone froze.
A voice outside shouted, “Police! Open up!”
Lucía ran to the monitor showing the front camera.
Six officers stood outside.
Behind them was Valentina Cruz.
And beside her, smiling beneath a black umbrella, was Rafael Castellanos.
Ramiro struggled to his feet.
Tomás whispered, “Back door?”
Lucía checked another camera and went pale.
“Blocked.”
Rafael lifted his face toward the camera as if he knew we were watching.
Then he held up a sign.
May you like
It read:
GIVE ME MY GRANDSON, OR I BURN EVERY NAME.
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