There was even a blurry aerial image: a gray square surrounded by forest, and in the middle, something long and curved—like half a metal cylinder. An old semicircular hangar.
Scrap metal in the middle of nowhere.
My first instinct was to throw the paper away and look for work. I needed a plan. A room. Something. I needed to save up to fight for Mariana. The system doesn’t hand you your siblings out of pity. And Mariana had the same clock ticking: six years and a black bag.
But the paper wouldn’t leave my mind.
One hundred pesos.
A place to go.
A dot on the map that, even if ugly, was mine.
At the ticket window, I saw two destinations: one to Mexico City—promising shelters and anonymity. The other to the notary’s town.
That was the first real decision of my life.
I bought the ticket to the mountains.
On the bus, the mountains rose like the world was closing in around me. I called Mariana from a borrowed phone at a roadside shop—yes, I broke the thirty-day rule, because some promises don’t care about regulations.
“Leo?” Her voice was small, trembling. “Where are you?”
“I’m going somewhere, May. It’s… Grandpa’s inheritance.”
“A house?”