The woman in the suit held up a phone.
“District Attorney’s office. We have part of the conversation recorded. Nobody leaves.”
Salas put his hands up.
“This is a misunderstanding.”
Ramiro, pressing his hand against his shoulder, let out a bitter laugh.
“For twenty years you called the truth a misunderstanding.”
My dad looked at my mom.
“You did this.”
She took a step forward.
“No. You did this. I just finally stopped covering it up.”
Then I looked at her.
“You knew?”
My mom broke down.
“Yes.”
The word hurt like another gunshot.
“You knew Ramiro was my dad?”
She cried openly.
“Yes.”
“And you let me believe he was a thief?”
My dad shouted:
“Because I could have taken you away from her!”
The police restrained him.
He struggled.
“I gave you everything! That house, that name, that life!”
My mom answered him:
“You gave us fear. Everything else, you stole.”
The yellow folder was handed over to the District Attorney’s office that very night. Ramiro was taken to the hospital under police guard. I sat in a cold room, my hands stained with his blood and my head full of questions that no one could answer without breaking me further.
My mom sat next to me.
“Forgive me, son.”
I didn’t look at her.
“Why did you marry him?”
It took her a moment to answer.
“Because your grandfather was dead, Ramiro was in prison, I was pregnant with you, and Arthur threatened to have him killed inside the state pen if I said a single word. He told me he could take you from my arms, too. Everyone believed him.
Nobody believed me.”
“Ramiro did.”
“Ramiro was locked away.”
I covered my face.
For years, I thought my mom was weak for letting my dad humiliate Ramiro.
Now I understood she lived life monitoring a bomb.
If she spoke, Arthur would destroy Ramiro.
If she stayed silent, she destroyed me.
And even so, when he got out of prison, she was the only one who ran to hug him.
The only one who knew the guilty man was sitting at our table.
The investigation uncovered everything slowly.
Not like in the movies.
Not with a single saving piece of evidence.
But with yellowed papers.
With damaged recordings.
With compared signatures.
With an old guard found in another state, who finally confessed that Arthur had paid him to testify against Ramiro.
