Abi sat down next to him and began to talk. She told him that she lived in Iztapalapa with her grandmother Tomasa, that she sold lemonade after school to help with the rent, that she wanted to be an astronaut or a chef, or both at the same time. Santiago, who normally measured each word as if it cost millions, ended up telling him about stars, telescopes, and chess.
They became friends without asking the world for permission.
From then on, they met on the same bench every Wednesday.
Santiago taught him chess. Abi taught him how to laugh again.
Without saying a word, he paid Doña Tomasa’s rent debt and secured an anonymous scholarship for the girl’s school. But he never wanted Abi to see him as a rich man. He wanted her to see him simply as Santiago, the man who loved the stars and lost chess matches to a seven-year-old girl.
However, as that friendship grew, something dark was stirring nearby.
His assistant, Victor, secretly informed Ricardo of the businessman’s every move. And Ricardo, consumed by greed, had spent months tampering with his medication to weaken him more quickly. He wanted to make him appear mentally incapacitated, remove him from the company, and take everything for himself.
Santiago began to suspect something was wrong when his memory lapses worsened in a strange way. His doctors told him that some of his decline didn’t quite match the expected progression of his illness. So he started writing everything down in a diary and hid a small recorder in his wheelchair.
What he recorded was horrifying.
Ricardo’s conversations with Victor about altered dosages. Rebecca’s comments asking how long it would take to access the accounts. Plans to bribe doctors, lawyers, and fabricate reports.
When he suffered a severe seizure and ended up hospitalized, he understood that his time was running out.
That night he called Rosa, the housekeeper who had worked in his house for fifteen years and whom he still trusted.
—In my studio… purple folder… diary… recorder… letters—he said, his voice breaking—. Take them to Abi. Only to her.
Rosa obeyed.
She arrived at Abigail’s humble apartment late at night. Doña Tomasa opened the door, startled. Abi came out with red eyes from crying; she had gone to the park that very afternoon and Santiago hadn’t shown up.
Rosa handed him the backpack.
“He trusts you,” he told her. “More than anyone else.”
Abi hugged the backpack as if it weighed the whole world.
And somehow, it weighed on me.
Now she was there, in court, holding the truth in her hands.
Judge Elena looked at the recorder.
—Do you know what’s in that?
—Yes, ma’am— Abi said. —The voice of those who hurt her.
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