“I’m sure you left it in the office, sit down, I’ll get you some coffee,” she offered, taking up some time. Her hands operated the automatic while her mind reviewed the photos of her daughter in that dungeon.
Mateo accepted, checking his smartwatch with impatience. Fifteen minutes passed that seemed like centuries, until the sound of two vehicles turning off halfway down the block broke the tension.
The main door burst open. Beto entered first, his fists clenched and his face red with anger, closely followed by Commander Garza, who already had his hand on the holster of his weapon.
Mateo stood up, surprised and repeatedly pale.
“What’s going on here, Comaпdaпte?” Mateo asked, aware of his superiority.
Garza didn’t respond. He looked at Elepa. She took Mateo’s cell phone out of her forehead and handed it to the policeman. “I found this,” Elepa said in a trembling voice. “Read it.”
Commander Garza reviewed the messages and photos. His jaw tightened almost to the point of breaking.
Beto looked over the policeman’s shoulder and let out a roar that made the windows shake. He lunged at Mateo, slamming him against the kitchen wall and knocking the chairs to the floor.
“Idiot! You damned wretch!” Beto shouted, while Garza intervened to separate them.
Mateo gasped, his mask of perfection shattered. “I can explain! It’s not what you think!” he pleaded, but nothing clicked. He didn’t say Sofia was dead.
De repeпte, υпa camioпeta Sυbυrbaп пegra se detυvo freпéticameпte freпte a la casa. Era Doña Carmeп.
She had tracked her son’s phone. As she got out of the vehicle, wearing her designer clothes and her gold rosary around her neck, she saw through the window Garza handcuffed to Mateo.
Carmeп iпteptó dar media vuelta para hurir, pero Beto salió corriendo y bloquea el paso, arras a los llaves de sus manos.
“Where are you, you demon witch?” hissed Elepa, going out into the portico, scolding the woman who had brought him stews during his daughter’s wake.
Carmen spat with contempt, losing all her composure as a society lady. “It was all her fault. If she had signed the land papers, none of this would have happened.”
Garza didn’t waste any time. He put the two detainees in his patrol car and requested reinforcements by radio.
Elea, Beto and Garza got into the truck and sped off towards the old abandoned hacienda of Carmen’s family, located on the outskirts of the town, the only place isolated enough to hide such a dark secret.
The journey took 20 minutes of pure agony. Upon arriving at the ruined hacienda, they found the truck of “El Chucho”, the local thug. Garza unsold his weapon and kicked the back door.
Chucho was sitting in the kitchen drinking a beer, and upon seeing the police, he raised his hands without resisting.
“To the basement!” Garza shouted.
Elea ran down the stone stairs, not caring about the darkness or the musty, damp smell. At the bottom, there was a heavy wooden door with 3 steel bolts.
Beto took a crowbar he found on the ground and, with the strength that only rage grants, he smashed the locks one by one.
The door creaked open. The stench of confinement, medicine, and despair hit Elea’s face.
Eп la esqυiпa de la refucida habitaciónп, sobre Åп colchóп maпchado, Åпa figura esquelética se eпcogió, cυbréпdose el rostro coп los brazos, temblaпdo violetaпtameпte.
“Don’t hit me, Chucho, I already took the pills, I swear,” pleaded a broken, raspy voice, barely a whisper of what it once was.
Elea fell to her knees on the cold cement. “My daughter,” she sobbed, a pain that tore at her soul. “Sofia… it’s me. I’m your mom.”
The woman lowered her arms slowly. Her eyes, surrounded by deep dark circles, looked at Elea as if she were a mirage. It took her several seconds to process reality.
“Mama…” he murmured, and crawled along the ground until he fell into Elepa’s arms.
Both women embraced in a heartbreaking hug, crying loudly in the middle of that dungeon while Beto cried at the threshold and Commander Garza wiped his tears before asking for an ambulance on the radio.
The following weeks shook the entire town and uncovered a sewer of corruption that no one had imagined.
The case became a social scandal. During the investigations, Sofia, already recovering in the hospital under police protection, revealed the whole chilling truth.
Five years ago, she had discovered that Mateo and Doña Carmen were stealing money from her late father’s company and were trying to forge signatures to seize the family’s valuable agave fields.
When Sofia threatened to go to the police, they invited her to have tea at the hacienda to “reach an agreement.” They drugged her.
But the plan didn’t end there. To collect the insurance and take full control of the land without raising suspicion, he needed Sofia to legally disappear.
That is where the respected Doctor Morales, the town’s lifelong doctor, was located.
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