We stepped outside.
Not into the street.
But into the old shed behind the property—the one Mateo had always said was too rotten to use, too insignificant to notice.
Rain was falling harder now.
The kind that erases footprints.
The kind that makes everything disappear.
Ricardo turned to me, his face lit by a flash of lightning.
“They wanted the house,” he said quietly. “The money. Control.”
Another bang echoed faintly from beneath the ground behind us.
“But they forgot something.”
I stared at him, still trying to catch up with the man I thought I knew.
