silently became sobs that shook his chest.
He looked at his daughter with a mixture of horror and hope that the guards would never forget.
“Is it true?” she asked, her voice breaking.
“Is what you’re telling me true?” he nodded.
Ramiro stood up so violently that the chair fell to the floor.
The guards rushed toward him, but he didn’t try to escape.
He screamed, he screamed with a force he hadn’t shown in five years.
“I’m innocent.
I’ve always been innocent.
Now I can prove it.”
The guards tried to separate the girl from her father, but she clung to him with a strength beyond her years.
“It’s time you knew the truth,” Salomé said, her voice clear and firm…
“It’s time.” Colonel Méndez watched everything from the observation window. His instinct, the one that had kept him alive for 30 years, screamed at him that something extraordinary was happening. He picked up the phone and dialed a number he hadn’t used in years. “I need you to stop everything,” he said. “We have a problem.” The security footage showed everything with brutal clarity. The silent embrace, the whisper, Ramiro’s transformation, the cries of innocence. The little girl repeating that phrase. Colonel Méndez played the video five times in a row in his office.
“What did he say to her?” he asked the guard who had been closest. “I couldn’t hear, Colonel, but whatever it was, that man changed completely.” Méndez leaned back in his chair. In 30 years, he had seen it all. False confessions, innocent people convicted, guilty people released on technicalities, but he had never seen anything like this. Ramiro Fuentes’ eyes, those eyes that had always filled him with doubt, now shone with something he could only describe as certainty. He picked up the phone and called the Attorney General.
