The corridor was colder than I expected. The air carried a faint metallic smell, like something that had been waiting too long to be used. Ricardo moved with certainty, guiding us through the narrow path as if he had walked it a hundred times in his mind.
“Where does this lead?” I whispered.
“Out,” he said simply.
Behind us, a sudden thud echoed through the wall.
They had realized.
Mateo’s voice—no longer calm—shouted something I couldn’t make out. Lidia followed, sharper, frantic now. The sound of something heavy being dragged. Then banging.
They were trying to get in.
But they couldn’t.
Because they didn’t know where to look.
Ricardo stopped at the end of the passage and knelt again, sliding a second hidden latch. A narrow door opened outward, and a rush of cool night air hit my face.
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.
