—Then let me come find you and I’ll tell you to your face, with all the truth.
Mariana arrived at the workshop the next day, without escorts, without announcements. Diego saw her get out and his chest tightened: he wanted to hug her and reprimand her at the same time.
They talked outside, with the smell of oil and hot metal all around.
—I didn’t lie to you about what I felt—Mariana said. —I hid who I am from you because… with you I felt like a person.
Diego looked down at his calloused hands.
—I don’t want to be the whim of a rich woman.
—You’re not a whim. You’re… the first truth that’s happened to me in years.
Diego took a deep breath.
—One more chance. But no secrets.
Mariana nodded, holding back tears.
Neither of them noticed the man who, from a parked car, was taking pictures of them with a long lens. And they noticed even less the other man, the one watching with a crooked smile: Patricio Ledesma, Mariana’s old suitor, spoiled heir, a specialist in getting what he wanted through pressure.
The next day, the newspaper woke up with the headline: “Ríos heiress, seen with local mechanic.”
Mariana’s father, Don Roberto Ríos, exploded.
In his glass and steel office, Diego felt smaller than ever.
“So you’re the hero,” Don Roberto said, giving him a sharp look. “What do you want? Money? A position? My daughter?”
“I don’t want anything,” Diego replied through gritted teeth. “I pulled her out of a burning car. That’s all.”
“We investigated who you are,” Don Roberto continued, relentless. “Your mother cleans houses. You earn what I spend on one dinner. Do you really think you can maintain a lifestyle like Mariana’s?”
Mariana stepped forward.
—Dad, stop!
Then Doña Teresa Ríos, Mariana’s mother, entered, with a calmness that was more imposing than the shouts.
“Roberto… remember who you were when you came to this family,” she said. “Remember how they judged you.”
The silence grew thick.
Don Roberto breathed as if he were swallowing pride.
“Six months,” he declared. “Six months to prove you’re not an opportunist. If you can’t build something serious in six months… you can stay away from Mariana.”
Diego wanted to refuse out of dignity, but Mariana grabbed his hand tightly.
“We’ll do it,” she said. “Together.”
The weeks were a test. Mariana was traveling, Diego was working double shifts. And when Patricio started hanging around with “friendly” smiles, Diego knew there was poison behind it.
The fifth month brought the hardest blow: one night, as he was leaving the shop, Diego noticed something strange about his old truck. The brake pedal felt… too loose. As a mechanic, he knew it before he even started the engine: someone had tampered with the brake line. If he had driven onto the road, he would have been killed.
That same morning, he checked Mariana’s car—the one she had used the day of the fire, now stored as scrap metal in a tow yard by the insurance company—and found a charred but revealing piece: a hose cleanly cut, not burst by the heat. Before the fire.
Diego connected dots that no one had wanted to look at.
“The fire wasn’t an accident,” he told Mariana, his voice tense. “Someone started it.”
Mariana paled.
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