Colonel Méndez stepped forward, his boots echoing across the concrete, eyes fixed not on Ramiro but on the girl, who stood unnaturally still, as if she had rehearsed this moment in silence.
breath came in sharp bursts, his cuffed hands trembling against the metal ring bolted to the table, while Salomé held his gaze with a steadiness no child should ever learn.
“What did she tell you?” Méndez asked, not unkindly, but with the authority of a man who had buried doubt under decades of procedure and signed papers that ended lives.
Ramiro swallowed hard, tears clinging to his lashes. “She said the man with the scar was there that night. She saw him. She remembers.”
A murmur rippled through the guards. The social worker finally looked up, confused, glancing between father and daughter as if trying to decide whether this was grief or something far more dangerous.
“There was no other man,” the older guard snapped. “The case was closed. Evidence was clear. Fing3rprints on the g*n. Bl00d on your clothes.”
Salomé turned her head slowly toward the guard, her small fingers still gripping her father’s sleeve as if letting go would erase the courage she had gathered.
“There was another man,” she said quietly. “He came after Mama opened the door. He wore gloves. He argued. He pushed her.”
