Eduardo grabbed the envelope and tossed it aside.
“Let me guess. Sick family, no food, and now you want a reward?”
Coins clinked into Mateo’s hand.
“Buy yourself a snack.”
Eduardo walked away laughing. Mateo clenched his fists, humiliated, fighting tears. All he had wanted was to do the right thing.
What no one noticed was the man watching from above.
From his office window, Henrique Duarte, the company’s founder, had seen everything. At sixty-eight, he knew a business was defined not by profits, but by how it treated the powerless. What he’d witnessed made his blood boil.
He came down the stairs, his footsteps silencing the room.
“Eduardo,” he said.
The man froze.
“I saw everything,” Henrique said calmly.
He picked up the envelope and opened it. His face hardened. Inside were confidential documents from a multi-million-dollar deal he’d been desperately searching for.
The lobby went still.
“Where did you find this?” Henrique asked Mateo—gently.
“Near Mr. Álvaro’s stand on Olive Street, sir. I saw the logo and brought it back.”
“And why didn’t you keep it?”
Mateo frowned.
“Because it wasn’t mine.”
Something shifted inside Henrique. Years ago, he had been that child—hungry, honest, unnoticed.