The afternoon I picked Mateo Herrera up from school, he leaned toward me in the back seat and whispered, “Mr. Rafael… my back hurts.”

She didn’t break down.

She just looked for Alejandro, hoping he would save her one last time.

He didn’t.

When they took her away, she walked past me and murmured:

“This isn’t over.”

He might have been right.

But for her, one thing was ending.

Impunity.

That night, Alejandro sat in the kitchen, not the office. Without his jacket. Without his phone. Without that invisible armor powerful men use to avoid confronting the disaster.

Mateo was upstairs, finally asleep, after the doctor cleaned his wounds and gave him something for the pain. Claudia didn’t want to leave his side.

I didn’t want to leave either, but I didn’t know if it was my place to stay.

Alejandro asked me to sit down.

He took a long time to speak.

“I saw him change,” he finally said. “I saw him fade away. And I chose to believe the easy explanations.”

I didn’t answer.

Because he was right.

“I brought her into this house.”

“Yes,” I said.

He looked at me as if he were waiting for a white lie. I didn’t give it to him.

“But today you were also the one who let her out.”

He covered his eyes with his hand.

“That doesn’t erase anything.”

“No.”