Chapter 2 - CHAPTER 2: THE SHADOW OF POLANCO
The air inside the sleek, leather-scented Mercedes SUV felt heavy enough to choke a man. Alejandro kept one hand on the steering wheel, his knuckles white, while his thumb incessantly flicked against his phone’s glass screen. The traffic on Paseo de la Reforma had ground to its typical evening crawl, but for the first time in his life, Alejandro wasn't cursing the red lights. He was terrified of arriving home.
In the back seat, Nicolás was curled against the door, his eyes fixed on the blurring streetlights outside. He hadn't spoken since they left Parque México. The small blue cap his father had forced back onto his shaved head sat askew, but the boy made no move to fix it.
"Nicolás," Alejandro began, his voice surprisingly raspy. "Eat something tonight. The chef made the cream soup you asked for yesterday."
"I'm not hungry," the boy whispered without turning around.
"You need your strength. The doctors at the clinic said—"
"I don't care what the doctors said," Nicolás interrupted, his voice devoid of the usual affection he held for his father. "You threw money at her, Dad. Like she was trash. She didn't ask you for anything."
Alejandro’s pride flared, a knee-jerk reaction cultivated through decades of boardrooms and hostile corporate takeovers. "You don't understand how the world works, son. People in this city see a boy like you—a boy whose family name is on half the high-rises in Santa Fe—and they take advantage. She knew who you were."
Nicolás turned his head slowly. His pale cheeks were flushed, his dark eyes wide with an anger far too old for a nine-year-old child. "She didn't even know my last name! She just saw that I was bald! She was the only person all month who didn't look at me like I was going to break!"
Alejandro opened his mouth to deliver a sharp, logical rebuttal, but the words withered in his throat. He looked at his son in the rearview mirror—the hollow cheeks, the dark circles under his eyes, the absolute solitude surrounding him. Alejandro turned back to the road, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
When they arrived at their gated estate in Polanco, Nicolás stepped out of the vehicle without waiting for the driver. He marched straight up the marble stairs, past the housekeepers who offered gentle greetings, and locked himself in his bedroom.
Alejandro stood in the soaring foyer, surrounded by minimalist Italian furniture, original contemporary oil paintings, and the cold, vast silence of an oversized house. He walked into his study, poured two fingers of scotch, and sat behind his walnut desk. He didn't turn on the lamps. He sat in the dark, watching the city skyline glint through the floor-to-ceiling glass.
His phone vibrated. It was his personal assistant, Andrea.
"Sir," she said, her voice taut with tension. "I've gathered more information regarding Daniela Reyes. And... the photograph."
Alejandro took a slow sip of his drink, though he couldn't taste the alcohol. "Tell me."
"Her mother, Valeria Reyes, worked as a private archivist and personal assistant in Polanco six years ago," Andrea explained. "Specifically, she was employed by your late wife, Sofía."
Alejandro’s glass froze halfway to his lips. "Sofía?"
"Yes, sir. Valeria worked closely with Doña Sofía during the last year of her illness, right before she passed. After Doña Sofía’s death, Valeria left the city and moved back to a neighborhood near Tepito. She passed away eight months ago from chronic respiratory failure. Daniela has been living with her elderly grandmother, surviving on small handcrafts, street vending, and community assistance."
Alejandro’s mind raced through memories he had spent half a decade trying to erase. After Sofía died of heart failure when Nicolás was only four, Alejandro had done what he always did when faced with unspeakable pain: he compartmentalized. He threw away her personal papers, locked up her jewelry in bank vaults, donated her clothes, and buried himself in work. He had convinced himself that by erasing the physical traces of Sofía’s decline, he was protecting Nicolás from grief.
"What did the nurse say about the photograph?" Alejandro demanded, his voice cracking slightly.
"The nurse at the pediatric unit said Daniela carried a sealed leather pouch inside her backpack everywhere she went," Andrea replied. "She told people her mother left her a sacred trust before she died. A promise to deliver a personal journal and a sealed letter to Sofía’s son when he turned nine."
"Why didn't this woman—this Valeria—come to me directly six years ago?" Alejandro barked, the suspicion rising in him once more. "Why send a child to stalk my son in a public park?"
"Because, sir..." Andrea paused, swallowing hard through the line. "According to the hospital staff, Valeria tried to visit your corporate offices four times after Doña Sofía died. Security turned her away at the front gates every single time. Your orders back then were very clear: no one from Doña Sofía’s past was permitted to contact you or Nicolás."
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The scotch tasted like ash in Alejandro’s mouth.
He lowered the glass to the desk with a trembling hand. The ghost of his own past had returned, not through high-priced lawyers or corporate rivals, but in the small, bruised hands of a homeless girl he had humiliated in front of a hundred strangers.
