I felt nausea rising in my throat.
“Is he my dad?”
Ramiro closed his eyes.
My dad smiled with pure hatred.
“Congratulations, Ramiro. You’ve gone and broken his head.”
“No,” my uncle said. “You’ve been filling it with lies since the day he was born.”
I looked at Ramiro.
The man from the tin shed.
The inmate everyone called a thief.
The one who would give me half his bread when he thought I wasn’t noticing.
“Are you my dad?” I repeated.
This time, he answered.
“Yes, Diego.”
Something collapsed inside me.
It wasn’t instant love.
It wasn’t relief.
It felt as if someone had ripped up the floorboards and exposed all the years buried underneath.
My dad stepped toward me.
“Give me those papers.”
I backed up.
Salas moved faster. He tried to snatch the folder from me, but Ramiro shoved him. My dad raised the gun. I screamed.
The gunshot echoed through the office.
Ramiro fell against the desk.
For a second, I thought he had been hit in the chest.
Then I saw the blood on his shoulder.
“Ramiro!”
I didn’t say uncle.
I didn’t say dad.
Just his name.
I grabbed a wrench from the floor and threw it with all my might. It struck my dad on the wrist. The gun dropped and slid under a chair.
Salas tried to run.
He didn’t make it.
The office door swung open, and two police officers in vests burst in, followed by a woman in a dark suit.
And right behind them was my mom.
Her face was pale, but her eyes were steady.
“It’s over, Arthur,” she said.
My dad froze.
“Clara…”
“Don’t call me that.”
I had never heard my mom speak to him with such calm.
