He thought he was crying at his daughters’ grave, but a poor boy revealed something to him that left him breathless.
The morning was covered in a soft mist, the kind that clings to the ground like a gray veil, muffling colors and sounds. The millionaire Adrián Monteverde advanced amidst the silent tombstones with a bouquet of white flowers in his hand. His hands were trembling. The cold wind brushed his face but he barely noticed it. The cemetery had always been a strange place for him, distant, remote, almost forbidden, but ever since the death of his twins, Bianca and Abril, he had been coming every week without fail.
It was the only place where he felt them close, or at least that was what he tried to believe. But no matter how much he visited them, how many flowers he left for them, how long he stayed there, the grave always seemed empty to him, as if the girls’ souls were not resting in that place. Adrián didn’t say it aloud. To him, it was nonsense, but he felt it every time he approached. A parent can feel when something doesn’t fit, even if the whole world says otherwise.
He stopped in front of the double tombstone. It was simple, elegant, and the names of his daughters were carefully engraved. Bianca, Abril — loved forever. Adrián carefully placed the bouquet down, as if the marble might break. His breath began to hitch. Memories attacked him mercilessly: their laughter, their overlapping voices, their feet running on the waxed floor, their small hands curling into his polo shirt so he wouldn’t leave. And then the fire, the alleged fire at his ex-wife’s house, the reports, the blurry photos, the call from the hospital that left him voiceless.
Adrián gritted his teeth. “My children,” he said, kneeling. “I didn’t have the chance to save them. Forgive me for being late.” Tears fell uncontrollably, and then, between the sobs, something strange happened. He heard small, slow footsteps—not the footsteps of an adult. Adrián turned his head in confusion. There was a child, a dirty child, thin as a thread, in torn clothes, worn-out shoes, and a hat too big for his head. He looked about 8 or 9 years old. He was watching him from behind a tombstone like a scared kitten.
Adrián wiped his tears awkwardly. “I’m sorry, little one. Are you lost?” The child didn’t answer; he just took a step forward and looked straight at him with a deep, sad, wise gaze, as if he had seen more life and sorrow than a child should know. Adrián felt a strange shiver. The child approached until they were face to face. “Sir,” he said in a low, almost broken voice. “Are you crying for them?” Adrián blinked. “For whom?” The child pointed at the tombstone with a trembling finger. “For the twins, right?” Adrián felt his heart jump in his chest. “Yes,” he answered. “Bianca and Abril, my daughters.” The boy bowed his head as if he were about to say something terrible. “Sir, please don’t cry.” Adrián felt a knot of irritation mixed with pain. This was not the day for a stranger to tell him how to feel. “You don’t understand, little man,” he tried to say calmly. “My daughters died. I can’t stop crying.” The boy raised his head. His eyes were full of fear.
“But actually, sir,” he repeated, moving closer. “They aren’t there.” Adrián frowned. “What are you saying?” The child swallowed hard. He looked around as if afraid someone else might hear, and then he uttered the sentence that chilled the millionaire to the bone. “Sir, they are at the dump.” Adrián gasped, as if something had hit him in the chest. “What? What did you say?” he whispered, unable to process it. The child backed away, trembling. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to scare you, but it’s too late.” That message pierced through all his pain, all his logic, all his history, and shattered it. Adrián suddenly stood up with a mix of fear and hope. “Explain yourself,” he demanded in a firm voice. “Right now.” The child took a deep breath, looked at the grave, looked at the millionaire, and told the truth he had been hiding for months—the truth no one wanted to hear. “Sir, your children, your twins, are alive.”
Adrián felt the world shifting beneath his feet because, for the first time in a long time, the emptiness of the grave began to make sense. Hope, which he thought was extinguished, reignited like a spark in the midst of darkness. The cold wind hit the cemetery as a warning. Between the silent graves and dried flowers, the millionaire Adrián Monteverde stood motionless, his heart pounding in his chest. He had just heard something impossible, something forbidden, something his mind denied for survival, but his soul needed to believe. “Sir, your daughters, your twins, are alive.” The poor boy turned away, appearing terrified that he had committed a crime by saying it. His face was a mixture of fear, sincerity, and accumulated guilt. Adrián felt short of breath. “What is your name?” he asked in a voice he didn’t recognize. It was a broken, desperate voice. The boy lowered his head. “My name is Julian.” The millionaire took a few steps toward him. “Julian, you said my children are alive. Where?”
The boy looked up briefly, just long enough to repeat it. “At the dump, sir.” Adrián clenched his hands. His heart was on fire. “It’s not possible.” “It is,” Julian whispered. Before he even realized it, Adrián walked until he was right in front of him. The boy trembled but didn’t run away. “I want you to tell me the truth,” the millionaire demanded. “Everything. No matter what it is.” Julian took a deep breath. His voice was weak, as if every word cost him a piece of his life. “I scavenge at the dump every night.” Adrián lowered his guard slightly. The boy continued. “Months ago, on a cold night, I heard crying. It wasn’t a cat or a baby alone. Two girls were crying at the same time.” The words hung in the air, freezing even the ground. “When I found them, they were wrapped in dirty blankets and had bracelets on their wrists.” Adrián felt his legs failing him. “Bracelets,” he whispered. Julian nodded. “Yes, like the ones they put on babies at the hospital. They had names, Bianca and Abril.” Adrián’s throat closed up completely. He had to lean on a nearby tombstone to keep from falling. No, it couldn’t be. But the child looked at him with pure, raw honesty, leaving no room for lies. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Adrián asked with a tense voice, cracking with desperation. Julian lowered his gaze to the muddy ground. “Because I thought you were like them. The ones who left them there.” Adrián felt his heart stop for a second. “Did you see who left them?” The boy denied it, but his answer was disturbing. “No, but I saw a white van speeding out of the dump that night, like they were fleeing from something. And then,” he added, “I heard laughter, the laughter of adults.” Adrián took a deep breath to maintain his sanity. “Julian, where are they now? Have you seen them again?” The child swallowed hard. “Yes, I take care of them. I give them everything I can. Stale bread, water, sometimes clothes I find in the trash. They sleep there, hidden where no one sees them.” The millionaire widened his eyes in horror. “My daughters have been living in a dump all this time.” The child nodded. His eyes filled with silent tears. “I tried, I tried to help them, protect them, but I was afraid that if someone saw them, they would hurt them or take them away again.” Adrián got goosebumps. Every word from the child was painful. “I don’t want you to think I’m bad. I just wanted to save them.” Adrián felt a blow in the middle of his chest. This poor boy, who had nothing, had protected the most precious thing he had in the world. While he was crying at a fake grave, Adrián began to connect the dots: the doubts he had since the day of the fire, the way his ex-wife refused to see him on the day of the incident, the inconsistencies in the police report, the body he wasn’t allowed to approach for his own good. Everything was starting to fall into a sinister puzzle. “Why are you so sure it’s them?” Adrián asked now in a softer, almost pleading tone. For the first time, Julian raised his chin. “Because I heard them mention their names and say ‘Daddy’ when they had a fever. And because,” he swallowed hard, “they look like you, sir.” The millionaire felt the cold flowing down his spine. “Take me to them,” Adrián asked in a trembling whisper. It was a desperate plea, a human prayer, a weak cry. Julian looked nervous. “No, there are people watching during the day. It’s dangerous. They might see them, they might take them away.” Adrián grabbed him tightly by the shoulder, without hurting him, but with an urgency stemming from his soul. “Son, if my children are alive, I need to see them. Now, now.” The boy hesitated, bit his lip, looked around as if afraid a shadow might hear, and then nodded with a small, almost imperceptible movement. “We have to take a path that no one uses.”
The millionaire followed him out of the cemetery. The child walked quickly, the soles of his feet bare under his broken boots, like someone who knew sorrow by the inch. Adrián, from behind, watched him with a mix of sadness and admiration. That child, that little stranger, had been more of a father to his daughters for a few months than he had been in a whole year of mourning. And as they walked through the gray streets, piles of scrap metal, and smoke from makeshift bonfires, Adrián felt something inside him that he hadn’t felt since his daughters died. Hope, small, fragile, but alive, as if, in some inexplicable way, the twins were waiting for him.
The city began to change as Adrián and Julian left the cemetery. The clean avenues turned into unpaved alleys, where streetlights flickered and the smell of dampness mixed with smoke from street bonfires. The millionaire Monteverde walked quickly, barely noticing it, guided by a child who moved with agile steps, used to dodging debris, puddles, and stray dogs. It was a cruel contrast: the millionaire’s expensive black coat next to the guiding child’s torn and dirty clothes. Adrián no longer thought about that; he only thought of Bianca and Abril. If they were really alive, everything made sense. Or perhaps nothing made sense, but that no longer mattered.
“This way,” Julian said, taking a path hidden behind a graffiti-covered wall. Adrián looked around. That part of the city seemed forgotten. Makeshift houses, peeling walls, clotheslines hanging between broken windows, and trash piled in corners where no one cleaned. “Are you always alone here?” the millionaire asked. Julian shrugged. “I’m faster than those who want to do harm,” he replied with a coldness that didn’t match his age. Adrián felt a hole in his chest. That child spoke like someone who had survived for too long. “And your parents?” he asked gently. “I don’t have any,” Julian replied without stopping. It wasn’t a complaint. It wasn’t regret; it was a fact, and that was what hurt him.
After a 20-minute walk through increasingly desolate streets, the child pointed his chin toward the gray horizon. “There it is.” Adrián saw a vast expanse, like a sea of garbage stretching as far as the eye could see. Smoke rose from small pits where people burned trash to look for metal. Old trucks moved slowly, dumping piles of black bags. It was an open hell. “They live here,” the millionaire whispered, in disbelief. Julian nodded. “Not just anywhere. The dump has dangerous areas and others where no one enters. I hid them in a place no one watches.” The boy pointed to a specific and almost hidden area. Where there were old containers, collapsed walls, and a hole where a blanket could fit. Adrián felt an inexplicable vertigo. It felt like every step he took was a painful encounter with reality.
As they approached the dump’s entrance, Adrián heard something. A slight, distant, familiar sound: a cry. Julian tensed up. “Shh. Listen.” The millionaire held his breath. The crying repeated. It was faint, barely perceptible. “It’s them,” Julian whispered. “But they are scared. They rarely cry out loud. Only when they are cold or hungry.” Adrián’s world crashed down. This was the proof his heart had been waiting for for months. He almost ran, but Julian stopped him with an arm. “Not like that,” he said. “If the girls see an adult running, they hide more. They are afraid of everyone.” The millionaire felt deep tears. What had been done to them? What had they experienced? “And you?” Adrián asked. “Why aren’t they afraid of you?” Julian lowered his gaze. “Because I don’t yell at them. Because I bring them bread, because I stick to the wall when they cry so they don’t feel like I’m going to touch them without permission.” Adrián closed his eyes for a moment. That child, who had nothing, no home, no adult to love him, was more of a guardian than anyone.
They entered the dump. The air carried bags, cans, dust, and smoke that stung the eyes. The millionaire covered his mouth and nose, but he followed the child without hesitation. Julian walked over mountains of trash with disturbing confidence. He knew where to step, where to avoid, which mounds were unstable, and which areas were dangerous. “When I found them, they were there,” he said, pointing to a spot. “But I moved them later.” Adrián observed the place, a corner amidst piles of scrap metal and plastic where there was barely space for two rolled-up blankets.
“They were freezing,” the boy continued. “They don’t speak, they were still very young. I thought they would die that day, but they didn’t.” The millionaire felt his stomach churn. “My wife said they died in the fire,” Adrián whispered. “But you, you said you found them alive.” Julián nodded. “There was smoke on their blankets and they were dirty, as if they had been dumped after something terrible. And, I swear to you it will be worth whatever you pay me.” Adrián swallowed hard, unable to bear the pain in his chest.
Suddenly, Julián stopped and raised his hand. “Don’t move, they’re coming.” Adrián froze. In the middle of the garbage piles, in a hole hidden under a dirty blue tarp, two small shadows moved. Small, fragile, afraid. Julián took a step forward. “Abril. Bianca,” he whispered in a low voice. “It’s me. I’m Julián.” The millionaire felt his breath hitch. It was like a dream, or a nightmare, or a miracle. The canvas moved slightly. Thin hands grasped it and then, shyly, two dirty faces, with large, terrified eyes, peeked out.
They were identical, twins, malnourished, but alive, alive. Adrián’s world fell to his knees. “Bianca,” he whispered, trembling. “Abril.” The girls looked at him but didn’t approach. They immediately turned their backs and hid behind Julián. The boy turned to him. “Don’t come closer,” he said in a low voice. “They are afraid of adults.” Adrián felt a lump in his throat. “But I’m their father.” Julian gently shook his head. “Right now, I’m the only adult they’re not afraid of.”
And that truth, that single phrase, was like a direct punch to Adrián’s soul, because it meant his daughters had lived in a hell so great that they didn’t recognize even the one person who had loved them from the first second of their lives. The millionaire wept silently. He cried without restraint because he saw them, because they were alive, because they were there, and because he still couldn’t touch them. The twins, hidden behind Julián, watched him with wide eyes, as if something inside them knew the truth, but fear prevented them from fully believing it.
Night was about to fall, and what came next would be even more difficult. The garbage seemed to swallow the evening light. The piles of plastic and metal cast long shadows that made everything feel more sinister, colder, and lonelier. Adrián was a few meters away from the twins, trembling as if the earth were about to open beneath his feet. Bianca and Abril were still hiding behind Julián, only their eyes showing—large eyes that seemed to have seen too much for their young age. The millionaire wanted to run to them, hug them, apologize for everything, but he was paralyzed.
They had turned their backs instantly when they saw him. That hurt him more than anything in the previous months. “Julián,” Adrián whispered, his voice cracking. “Tell me what happened. Tell me everything you know.” The boy took a deep breath. You could tell that carrying this truth weighed more on him than his small body could bear.
“That night was awful, sir,” he began without looking up. “I was looking for food in the new containers, the ones behind the large wall. It was very windy, everything smelled. It smelled of burning.” Adrián frowned. “Burning, like fire?” Julian nodded slowly. “Yes, I didn’t know anything about a fire, but that’s what it smelled like. And then I heard a very low cry, as if someone was covering their mouth so it wouldn’t be heard.” The twins, beside him, shivered. Julián looked at Adrián and then at them, as if asking for permission in his eyes to continue speaking. Abril gripped his polo shirt with her small, dirty fingers, as if finding security there.
That small gesture was enough for the millionaire to feel another pain in his chest. His daughters were clinging to anything but him, because he had unknowingly become a stranger. Julian continued. “I thought it was an injured animal until I heard another voice crying the same way. Two cries at the same time, like two kittens, but they weren’t. I approached in the middle of the piles; there were burnt bags, torn blankets, and in the middle of all that…” his voice broke. “I saw them. Two very small babies, identical. Their faces were dirty, their lips were purple, and they were wrapped in blankets that were still smoking.” Adrián put a hand to his mouth. The image hit him like a whiplash.
Julian lowered his gaze. “Sir, I thought they were going to die. They had a fever, they were shivering, and no one, no one was helping them.” The boy swallowed hard. “So I carried them as best as I could, one in each arm, and ran to a place where the wind didn’t get in, where I could cover them properly.” He pointed to that hole, a narrow space under the old scrap metal. “I put them there.” Adrián still couldn’t breathe normally. The boy continued. “I gave them water when they woke up. I sang to them softly so they wouldn’t cry too loud. At first they didn’t understand, they were afraid, but when I gave them a piece of bread, they stopped crying. Then they told me their names.”
Adrián raised his head, trembling. “They told you their names?” “Yes. First Abril said ‘Abi’ and the other said ‘Bia’. I didn’t know what it meant, but later I realized they were just small and they called me ‘Daddy’ a couple of times because of the fever. That’s why I knew they had a family.” Adrián closed his eyes, a tear fell and mixed with the gray dirt beneath his feet. “Why? Why didn’t you ask for help?” he asked, with nothing but pain.
“Because once,” Julián said, trembling too, “once I took a baby I found to the community center, and some men took him away and I never saw him again.” “Men?” Adrián repeated, alarmed. “Yes, bad people. They believe that children without parents are worthless. And I thought that if someone saw them hanging around here, they would take the twins too.” The child put a hand to his face, wiping away dirt and tears simultaneously. “I didn’t hide them out of bad intentions, sir, I hid them because it was the only thing I knew how to do. Because here, here no one cares about anyone.”
The silence was almost unbearable. When the twins heard the story, they clung tighter to Julián. One covered his torn sweater, as if it were a safe blanket. The other looked at him without speaking, with wide eyes that seemed to beg him to be quiet.
Adrián felt his heart crushed into a thousand pieces. For the first time, Julian looked at him without fear. “I knew you were their father,” he said in a low but firm voice. “Not because they said it, but because when they saw you crying at the grave, they stayed that way.” He pointed to the shivering twins. “They didn’t cry. They didn’t run away completely. They looked at you as if they had a stored memory, even if it was painful.”
Adrián put both hands to his face. His entire body was shaking. The girl watched him from behind the boy. For a moment, he could see half of her face. That gesture, insignificant to anyone else, was a lifeline coming back for Adrián. It was as if they were trying to remember, as if something in them wanted to believe, but the fear was greater than anything else.
The millionaire took a step. The twins moved back two steps. The millionaire stepped back. The twins were still. Julian smiled faintly. “Come on, Sir,” he whispered.
“Like this, slowly. They don’t want to lose it again.” The air became thicker, more emotional, more painful. The girls were breathing quickly. Adrián, too. The wind swept garbage and dust around as if emphasizing the moment. The twins were alive, they had survived, and although they hadn’t run to their father, they were there, looking at him. That was enough for now. When Adrián took a step without moving forward, only showing that he wouldn’t approach all at once, Abril did something unexpected. She stretched out her small, trembling hand and showed it to the air, as if she wanted to confirm he was there.
Julián gently stroked her head and whispered, “Don’t be afraid. He’s the good dad.” For the first time, the twins still didn’t retreat. The wind kicked up burnt paper and torn bags around them. The heart of the dump seemed to breathe, as if every pile hid secrets that had been buried for months. Adrián stood, his eyes shining and his heart beating too fast for his age, looking at his twins for the first time since he thought they were gone. Bianca and Abril followed Julian, trembling, but they didn’t run away.
That small gesture—not running away—was the closest Adrián had been to them since the supposed day of the fire. The millionaire swallowed hard. “Julián, I want to help them, but I don’t know how to approach them without scaring them.” The boy turned to the twins, speaking to them with a softness that only a child who had suffered could give. “He’s not like the others,” he said slowly. “He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t hit, he doesn’t take things away. He’s Dad.” The twins listened without moving. One held a dirty blanket to her chest. The other hid half her face on Julián’s shoulder, but one eye stayed on Adrián, as if she wanted to record him. The millionaire suppressed the urge to cry again. Those tiny glances were the broken pieces of a bond that once existed and now had to be patiently rebuilt.
“I won’t touch them,” Adrián whispered. “I just want to see them, to know they’re okay.” Julian nodded understandingly. “They don’t know if adults hurt people, but they know you’re crying for them. They understand that.” Those words struck the millionaire’s soul directly.
A loud noise rang out in the distance, a falling container. The twins immediately huddled together. Their small bodies reacted with instinctive, almost automatic fear. Adrián noticed it. “They are always like this when they hear loud noises.” Julián lowered his head. “Yes, they think they’re coming again.” “Who again?” Adrián asked, feeling his body freeze. The boy hesitated, biting his lower lip. He looked at the twins as if asking for permission, and when Bianca nodded at him with a minimal movement, a signal he seemed to have used many times, Julián spoke. “The woman who left them lying around.”
Adrián felt his heart stop. “What woman?” Julián looked at the floor. “The one with the long blonde hair, pretty clothes, who smelled strongly like expensive perfume.” Adrián slowly looked up. Blonde, expensive perfume, elegant clothes. They matched too well. “Did you see her?” His voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t see her leave the girls,” Julián answered sincerely. “But I saw her later. She got into a white car. She got out near the place where I had hidden them. She looked everywhere. I was covered with a blanket similar to their clothes when she saw me.” Adrián’s hands trembled. “And then she left,” the boy said. “She was scared, like she was hiding something.”
The pieces began to fall into place, not everything. It wasn’t clear yet. But something was lifting the fog in the millionaire’s mind. The fire, the ex-wife, the abandoned girls, the car that was never mentioned, the certificate he never saw, and the grave that always seemed empty to him. His stomach clenched. “Do you remember anything else about that woman?” Adrián asked. Julian thought for a few seconds, tilting his head as if trying to reconstruct a vague dream. “Yes, I was crying heavily, but not like you cry for them. It was a strange cry, like someone who is afraid of being caught.” Adrián put his hands on his knees, feeling dizzy. He had seen his ex-wife cry like that many times for reasons very different from what she claimed.
Meanwhile, the twins continued to keep their eyes fixed on him. Bianca took a small step forward, tiny, but enough for Adrián to feel a rush of emotion in his chest. “I won’t hurt you,” he said, almost inaudibly. Bianca stopped, lowering her head, as if that voice, that intonation, that exact phrase was lodged in some corner of her childhood memory. Abril imitated her by taking half a step back. They continued to hide behind Julián, but they didn’t retreat. There was a light there, small, fragile, but real.
“How long have they been here?” Adrián asked without taking his eyes off his daughters. Julián responded with the instinct of someone who counts days in months, not on calendars. “A lot, maybe five or six.” When the intense cold came. The millionaire felt his legs give way. “Six months, six months, alive.” “Yes,” Julian said, his head down. “I really tried. I got food and water from the broken faucet and clothes from the piles the stores threw away.” The twins hugged him around his legs, seeking shelter. That gesture said everything. Julián hadn’t just fed them; he had kept them alive.
Adrián furiously wiped his tears. “Thank you. You saved my daughters.” The boy looked up, not knowing what to do with a compliment. “Just like that.” A noise rang out a few meters away, like metal collapsing. The twins immediately hid, burying themselves behind Julián, almost merging with him.
Adrián slowly knelt down. He didn’t move forward, he didn’t stretch out his arms, he just spoke. “Bianca, Abril, I’m Dad.” The wind blew the trash to one side. The world seemed to stop. The girls stood completely still. The millionaire added in a calm, trembling, but firm voice. “I won’t hurt them. I don’t yell. I won’t touch them without permission. I won’t take them away from Julián. I just want them to be safe.” A tear rolled down Bianca’s cheek. They didn’t understand all the words, but they understood something: the tone, the calm, the promise.
For the first time, Bianca approached him. Only halfway, but enough to break the ground under his feet. The sky was starting to get dark. The dump was not safe at night, and Julián knew it. “We need to leave soon,” he said nervously. “At night, bad men come, and if they see you, they might think you’re carrying money.” And if they see the girls… a clear shadow of danger crept into the air.
Adrián looked at his daughters, then the boy, then the dump. The truth felt like a knife. His ex-wife knew something, and it wasn’t something small—it was something immense, terrible. “And now, Julián,” Adrián said, “I need you to tell me everything you remember from that night, everything you saw, everything you heard.” The boy nodded slowly. “Okay, but not here. Here they can hear us.” The millionaire looked at his twins shivering in the shadows. He still couldn’t take them. He still couldn’t touch them, but now he knew what he had to do: find the truth. No matter what, no matter who fell. He would recover his twins, even if it was step by step, even with patience, even if he had to face his own history.
The first ray of danger was lit, and in the distance, someone else might have been watching. The sky was almost completely dark when Julián gently tugged the millionaire’s sleeve. “Sir, we really need to leave,” he whispered. “At night, men look for metal and sometimes children.” Adrián felt a cold chill run down his spine. He looked at his daughters. Bianca and Abril were still hiding behind Julián, trembling every time a truck rumbled in the distance. He couldn’t take them with him yet. No, now they would be lost to fear. And that place at that hour was a hornet’s nest that could explode.
“It’s okay,” Adrián said, slowly kneeling to get to the girls’ level. “I’m leaving, but I’ll be back. I’ll come back tomorrow and every day until they are no longer afraid.” The twins didn’t understand all the words, but they understood something. The tone, the calm, the promise. Bianca showed half of her face. Abril still clung to Julián, but she didn’t cry. That was a small miracle for Adrián.
Before leaving, Julián held the hands of the two girls. “We’ll be back in the morning. Don’t go out, I’m going with him.” The girls nodded with a small, almost imperceptible movement, as if accepting an instruction they had learned to follow to survive. Adrián looked at the dark hole where they lived. Something inside him broke, but he had to leave. He had to understand what had happened that hellish night.
They left the dump by the side path. The boy walked fearlessly, as if he knew every stone by heart. Adrián, on the other hand, could barely coordinate his steps. The emotion, the shock, the contained rage—everything was shaking him.
Finally, at a distance, Adrián said, “Julián, I need you to tell me exactly what you saw.” “Everything from the beginning.” The boy took a deep breath, hugging himself to keep warm. “I didn’t see when they left them,” he began. “But that night there was smoke, a lot, like burning important things. “What important things?” Adrián asked nervously. “Clothes, papers, things they didn’t want people to find. Sometimes they throw away bags that smell funny.” He paused occasionally, as if afraid to speak too darkly. Adrián didn’t rush him. The boy continued. “That night I heard an old white van with its lights off.”
He quickly went to the path no one used, the one in the back. “What time?” “Late. Almost everyone was already asleep. The girls weren’t there yet, but later, when I went to the big container, they were already there.” Adrián was walking as if short of breath. “Did you see the person driving?” “No, but I saw a woman get out a moment later. She walked near the hole where I hide them and was carrying a blanket similar to theirs.” The millionaire’s heart suddenly sped up. “What did that woman look like?” “Blonde, long hair, very clean, very elegant, as if she came from an important place.” Adrián felt the world ringing in his ears. His ex-wife had long, blonde hair, always perfect. She would never go to a place like the dump, unless she had something to hide. “Do you remember anything else?” he asked, though he feared the answer.
Julian paused in thought. Then he said something Adrián would never have imagined. “She was crying, but not like you, not sadly. She was crying like someone who has done something wrong and is afraid they’ll be found out. Like when I stole bread a few years ago and the owner saw me.” The millionaire stopped in his tracks. The night wind hit his face. Crying out of fear, not sadness. His ex-wife was there; she had faked everything; she intentionally abandoned the girls. No, it couldn’t be, but at the same time, everything fell into place so abruptly.
They arrived at the main street. An old taxi passed, kicking up dust. Adrián looked at the boy. “Julian, I need you to tell me one more thing, something important. Were the girls injured, did they look burnt?” Julian looked at him without fear, as if he had already carried enough truth for a lifetime. Julian shook his head. “They had smoke on their blankets, but they weren’t burnt, just weak and very dirty. Nothing else.” Adrián felt dizzy. He had to hold on to a rusty railing. If they weren’t burnt, what was that fire? And why was he never allowed to see the bodies? Why no autopsy? Why was everything so fast? He had lived through a manipulated, constructed, fabricated mourning. And he, blinded by pain, never questioned anything.
As they walked, Julian suddenly spoke without being asked. “The blonde woman had blood on her arm, very little, but she had it.” Adrián spun around sharply. “Whose blood? No one in the trash dump was hurt. She looked nervous, though, as if the world was collapsing.” Adrián felt a coldness that didn’t come from the weather. Blood, blankets like the girls’. Smoking, a van, an escape. Everything pointed to something much darker than a simple abandonment. Maybe his daughters were never in that fire. Maybe that fire was never what they said. Maybe his ex-wife didn’t escape the fire. Maybe she escaped the truth.
Julian stopped in front of a closed bakery. “I can sleep here in the back,” he said. “They throw out old bread. The girls eat it when I have nothing else.” Adrián looked at him, feeling a lump in his throat. This poor boy, barely seen by the city, had been the guardian, the only shield of the twins for months. “Julián,” Adrián said, kneeling to be at his height. “From now on, don’t go back to the dump alone. Tomorrow we will go together, and I will do everything to keep the girls safe. And you too.” The boy looked up. A mixture of relief and fear was visible in his eyes. He really would come back, he wouldn’t forget him. Adrián swallowed hard. “No, I won’t lose my daughters again, or you.” Julian opened his eyes in surprise. Perhaps it was the first time in his life someone had included him in a “We.”
That night, Adrián returned home with the pieces of his soul shattered. He couldn’t sleep; he couldn’t think of anything else. The twins were alive. The boy who cared for them was real. The abandonment was real, and his ex-wife could be a crucial piece in the darkest truth of his life. When the clock struck 3:00 AM, a certainty pierced him. This was not an accident, it was not a mistake, it was not a tragic fire—it was something planned, something evil. And tomorrow, Adrián Monteverde would start digging everything up, even if it meant destroying everything in his path.
The morning passed slowly, as if every minute had its own weight. Adrián didn’t sleep for a second. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the dark wall, his hands clenched, and his head full of impossible images: living, dirty twins, trembling behind Julián, and the phrase that kept repeating in his mind: They were not burnt. That detail crushed him inside. Now, he only thought of one thing. If they weren’t burnt, what really happened that night?
When the first rays of sunlight hit the window, Adrián abruptly stood up. He had to start at the beginning, at the official version, at the document he had only read once while crying, without questioning. He opened the safe in his office. Among company papers, contracts, and property deeds was the gray folder with the handwritten label: Fire. Case 1487. The word “Case” already seemed ridiculous to him. He opened it with trembling hands. The smell of the paper made him dizzy. There was the document he had signed, barely looking, with a broken heart and a cloudy mind. He held it up to the light. Death Certificate of Bianca Monteverde. Death Certificate of Abril Monteverde. The signatures, the seals, the date, the time—it was all there.
But something didn’t fit, something he hadn’t seen before because he was too devastated to read clearly. “It can’t be,” he whispered. The girls were declared dead at the same exact time, minute, and second. That wasn’t impossible, but it was highly suspicious. Then he saw another detail. Both certificates were signed by a doctor other than the one who usually treated the girls. A doctor he didn’t know. A name he had never heard: Dr. Manuel Reyes. Hospital del Norte. Adrián frowned. When his twins were babies, they were treated exclusively at a private clinic. Why would a doctor from a public hospital in another district sign the certificates? It didn’t make sense.
He opened more documents. He looked for the fire report, reading it line by line with attention he lacked when he received it, and then he saw it. A mistake, an error that changed everything. The report said the girls were rescued from the fire, taken by ambulance, and declared dead at the clinic, but the certificate listed a different location: Hospital del Norte. “Of course,” Adrián whispered. “It’s impossible.” There were two different versions, two places of death, two journeys, two different hands that signed papers that did not match. Someone had invented the story quickly, nervously, afraid, and he, blinded by pain, swallowed it all.
Adrián felt a violent vertigo and had to lean on the table to keep from falling. “They fooled me,” he whispered. “My God, I was completely fooled.” His cell phone vibrated. A message from an unknown number. When he opened it, a coldness ran down his spine. Stop digging up the fire. You don’t know who you’re messing with. Adrián froze. Someone else knew he was starting to look into the past. Someone was watching. Someone was nervous. And that person wasn’t Julián or the garbage collectors. It was the type of person who didn’t want him to know the truth. “They are afraid,” he whispered with a mixture of rage and clarity. And if they were afraid, it meant something. He was closer to the truth than he thought.
“He quickly went to the path no one used, the one in the back.” “What time?” “It was late. Almost everyone was already asleep. The girls weren’t there yet, but later, when I went to the big container, they were already there.” Adrián was walking as if short of breath. “Did you see the person driving?” “No, but I saw a woman get out a moment later. She walked near the hole where I hide them and was carrying a blanket similar to theirs.” The millionaire’s heart suddenly pounded faster. “What did that woman look like?” “Blonde, long hair, very clean, very elegant, as if she came from an important place.” Adrián felt the world ringing in his ears. His ex-wife had long, blonde hair, always perfect. She would never go to a place like the dump, unless she had something to hide. “Do you remember anything else?” he asked, though he feared the answer.
Julian paused in thought. Then he said something Adrián would never have imagined. “She was crying, but not like you, not sadly. She was crying like someone who has done something wrong and is afraid they’ll be found out. Like when I stole bread a few years ago and the owner saw me.” The millionaire stopped in his tracks. The night wind hit his face. Crying out of guilt, not sadness. His ex-wife was there; she had faked everything; she intentionally abandoned the girls. No, it couldn’t be, but at the same time, everything fell into place with too much certainty.
They reached the main street. An old taxi passed, kicking up dust. Adrián looked at the boy. “Julian, I need you to tell me one more thing, something important. Were the girls injured, did they look burnt?” Julian looked at him without fear, as if he had already carried enough truth for a lifetime. Julian shook his head. “They had smoke on their blanket, but they weren’t burnt, just weak and very dirty. Nothing else.” Adrián felt dizzy. He had to hold on to a rusty railing. If they weren’t burnt, what was that fire? And why was he never allowed to see the bodies? Why no autopsy? Why was everything so fast? He had lived through a manipulated, fabricated mourning. And he, blinded by pain, never questioned anything.
As they walked, Julian suddenly spoke without being asked. “The blonde woman had blood on her arm, very little, but she had it.” Adrián spun around sharply. “Whose blood? No one in the trash dump was hurt. She looked nervous, though, as if the world was collapsing.” Adrián felt a coldness that didn’t come from the weather. Blood, blankets like the girls’. Smoking, a van, an escape. Everything pointed to something darker than a simple abandonment. Maybe his daughters were never in that fire. Maybe that fire was never what they said. Perhaps his ex-wife didn’t escape the fire. Perhaps she escaped the truth.
Julian stopped in front of a closed bakery. “I can sleep here in the back,” he said. “They throw out old bread. The girls eat it when I have nothing else.” Adrián looked at him, feeling a lump in his throat. This poor boy, barely seen by the city, had been the guardian, the twins’ only shield for months. “Julián,” Adrián said, kneeling to be at his height. “From now on, don’t go back to the dump alone. Tomorrow we will go together, and I will do everything to keep the girls safe. And you too.” The boy looked up. A mixture of relief and fear was visible in his eyes. He really would come back, he wouldn’t forget him. Adrián swallowed hard. “No, I won’t lose my daughters again, or you.” Julian opened his eyes in surprise. Perhaps it was the first time in his life someone had included him in a “We.”
That night, Adrián returned home with pieces of his soul shattered. He couldn’t sleep; he couldn’t think of anything else. The twins were alive. The boy who cared for them was real. The abandonment was real, and his ex-wife could be a crucial piece in the darkest truth of his life. When the clock struck 3:00 AM, a certainty pierced him. This was not an accident, it was not a mistake, it was not a tragic fire—it was something planned, something evil. And tomorrow, Adrián Monteverde would start digging everything up, even if it meant destroying everything in his path.
The morning passed slowly, as if every minute had its own weight. Adrián didn’t sleep for a second. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the dark wall, his hands clenched, and his head full of impossible images: living, dirty twins, trembling behind Julián, and the phrase that kept repeating in his mind: They were not burnt. That detail crushed him inside. Now, he only thought of one thing. If they weren’t burnt, what really happened that night?
When the first rays of sunlight hit the window, Adrián abruptly stood up. He had to start at the beginning, at the official version, at the document he had only read once while crying, without questioning. He opened the safe in his office. Among company papers, contracts, and property deeds was the gray folder with the handwritten label: Fire. Case 1487. The word “Case” already seemed ridiculous to him. He opened it with trembling hands. The smell of the paper made him dizzy. There was the document he had signed, barely looking, with a broken heart and a cloudy mind. He held it up to the light. Death Certificate of Bianca Monteverde. Death Certificate of Abril Monteverde. The signatures, the seals, the date, the time—it was all there.
But something didn’t fit, something he hadn’t seen before because he was too devastated to read clearly. “It can’t be,” he whispered. The girls were declared dead at the same exact time, minute, and second. That wasn’t impossible, but it was highly suspicious. Then he saw another detail. Both certificates were signed by a doctor other than the one who usually treated the girls. A doctor he didn’t know. A name he had never heard: Dr. Manuel Reyes. Hospital del Norte. Adrián frowned. When his twins were babies, they were treated exclusively at a private clinic. Why would a doctor from a public hospital in another district sign the certificates? It didn’t make sense.
He opened more documents. He looked for the fire report, reading it line by line with attention he lacked when he received it, and then he saw it. A mistake, an error that changed everything. The report said the girls were rescued from the fire, taken by ambulance, and declared dead at the clinic, but the certificate listed a different location: Hospital del Norte. “Of course,” Adrián whispered. “It’s impossible.” There were two different versions, two places of death, two journeys, two different hands that signed papers that did not match. Someone had invented the story quickly, nervously, afraid, and he, blinded by pain, swallowed it all.
Adrián felt a violent vertigo and had to lean on the table to keep from falling. “They fooled me,” he whispered. “My God, I was completely fooled.” His cell phone vibrated. A message from an unknown number. When he opened it, a coldness ran down his spine. Stop digging up the fire. You don’t know who you’re messing with. Adrián froze. Someone else knew he was starting to look into the past. Someone was watching. Someone was nervous. And that person wasn’t Julián or the garbage collectors. It was the type of person who didn’t want him to know the truth. “They are afraid,” he whispered with a mixture of rage and clarity. And if they were afraid, it meant something. He was closer to the truth than he thought.
He put the documents away, closed the folder, and grabbed his coat. He had to go back to the hospital, to the place where the certificates were allegedly signed. Leaving the house was like stepping into a world he no longer recognized. Every shadow seemed suspicious to him. Every car passing too slowly gave him a bad feeling.
He arrived at the North Hospital, an old building with tired walls and a permanent smell of cheap disinfectant. It was not the kind of place his daughters would have been taken to. He asked to speak to Dr. Manuel Reyes. The receptionist looked at the computer and said something that chilled him. “Dr. Reyes died two months ago.” Adrián felt a shiver. Two months, right after the fire. “How did he die?” he asked. “He committed suicide. That’s what they say.” The receptionist’s voice had the indifference of someone accustomed to misfortune. “Can I see his file?” “No,” she answered without hesitation. “The doctor’s files were removed by legal order. We don’t have anything here.” Removed, eliminated, erased. That was not a coincidence.
Adrián clenched his fists. He felt it on his skin. This was bigger, darker, an organized network. He had only put one foot on the first thread. As he left the hospital, his cell phone vibrated again. A new message. This time worse. Next time you look, we won’t be so kind. Adrián looked up, glancing around. Cars, shadows, normal life, but someone somewhere was watching. And if he wanted to rescue his daughters from that hell, if he wanted to protect Julián, if he wanted to live, he had to continue, even if it hurt, even if it burned inside, because now he knew it with absolute certainty. The fire was a lie, a lie created by someone who wanted the twins to disappear. And tomorrow, when he returned to the dump, when he saw Bianca and Abril, he would tell them something he still didn’t know how to pronounce: Dad won’t stop.
The morning dawned, as if the sky could see what was about to happen. Adrián didn’t sleep. He barely closed his eyes for a few minutes, always with the image of his twins shivering amidst the garbage, hidden behind Julián, breathing fear as if it were air. He reread the threatening messages repeatedly. He reviewed the documents, compared the signatures, checked the names. Every new piece pushed him toward a truth he could no longer ignore. Someone had faked his daughters’ death. Someone wanted them to remain lost. Someone was watching his every step, and only one person was nervous.
It was around seven in the morning when Adrián left the house. He didn’t take his usual car, which was too flashy. He used an older, more discreet vehicle he had bought years ago to go out without attracting attention. That morning, he needed it more than ever. As he drove to the bakery where Julián was sleeping, he repeated an idea in his mind: Today, I’m getting them out of the dump, whatever the cost.
Julián was sitting in the back of the place with old bread in his hands and deep dark circles. He hadn’t slept much. His eyes widened when he saw Adrián arrive. “I thought…” the boy lowered his voice. “I thought you weren’t coming back.” Adrián knelt in front of him. “I promised I would come back, and I kept it.” The boy sighed with relief, but then he frowned. “For now, we have to hurry to the study,” Julián said. “I heard a van nearby last night. I don’t know who it was, but the girls are afraid.” That detail set off all the alarms for Adrián. “A white van?” he asked Julián. The boy looked at him puzzled. “Yes, the same as before.” Adrián felt his chest tighten. The same van he suspected, the same one someone mentioned in a message, the same one connected to the fire. They couldn’t waste any more time.
They walked toward the dump along the side path Julián knew by heart. Adrián was behind him, focused on every noise, every shadow, every car that passed too closely. In the distance, the dump looked like a sleeping monster. It smelled worse than the day before. The wind carried smoke from recent burnings, too much, as if someone had been checking things, moving them, looking for them.
Suddenly, Julian stopped. “Do you smell that?” he asked. “Yes,” Adrián answered. “It’s not the usual smell, it’s stronger.” The child swallowed hard. “It’s not burning metal; it’s burning clothes. Whenever they burn clothes, it’s because they don’t want anyone to see them.” A chill went down the millionaire’s spine. “Come on,” he ordered in a firm voice.
They crossed the landfill entrance. The ground groaned beneath his feet. Julian advanced quickly, but not as much as the previous night. He was nervous, as if he sensed something strange in the environment. When they were close to the hole where the twins slept, Adrián noticed the change immediately. The bags were moved, the blue tarp was pulled open. The dirty blanket Julián used to cover them was gone. “No,” Julián whispered freely. “It’s not the case.” Adrián felt his heart stop. “Where are they?” he asked in a weak voice, forcing the fear not to escape him.
The child ran to the hole. “Bianca! Abril!” No sound, no cry, nothing. Adrián felt the ground move beneath him. That silence was not normal. The day before, the girls cried softly when they heard footsteps. Now, complete silence. “Julián, do they hide like that when they are scared?” Adrián asked, barely breathing. The boy shook his head. “No, they usually cry softly or stick out their hand. Like this, they don’t hide.” The boy’s eyes were full of terror. “They are not here,” he cried out in despair. “Sir, they are not here.”
Adrián felt the world squeezing his chest. “Look at me, Julián,” he said, grabbing his shoulders. “Think about where they would go alone. They don’t leave alone. They are afraid. They always waited for me to come back.” The child broke free and started searching in the piles, in the bags, in the holes. His eyes were full of tears, but he didn’t cry. He breathed heavily, as if every second the twins were not found cost him years of his life.
Adrián also started searching. He moved bags, lifted boxes, kicked cans. Nothing, no trace, until a shadow caught his attention. A few meters away, small footprints were marked on the damp ground, three pairs of small footprints: the twins and Julián from the day before. But next to those footprints were larger marks, from adults, from boots, and they were not Adrián’s. “Julián, come here,” Adrián whispered. The boy approached, looked at the footprints, and froze. “Those, those are not mine,” he whispered. “I know,” Adrián replied. “Sir,” the boy’s voice broke. “Someone came here before us.”
Adrián closed his eyes for a moment. He wasn’t afraid; it was worse. A sharp fear mixed with deep rage. They had found his daughters. They had discovered the truth, and now someone else knew. More footprints continued toward the back of the dump, to the area where almost no one dared to enter. An area where the mountains of garbage were so unstable that a false step could swallow anyone. Julian moved toward it, but Adrián stopped him. “Don’t go near there,” he ordered. “It could be a trap.” The boy looked up. “Do you think they were taken?” Adrián swallowed hard. “I think someone didn’t want us to find them.”
And then he saw it on the ground, half buried in the bags, a pink ribbon, one he himself had bought when the twins were babies. He picked it up with trembling hands. Julian recognized it instantly. “That was Abril’s,” Adrián whispered. He gritted his teeth. “Julián, listen carefully,” he said with an inhuman calm. “Now, the real search begins.” The boy looked at him, his eyes full of fear. “What if they were taken away?” Adrián crouched down in front of him.
“Then we will keep going. But we won’t give up. Not you, not me.” The wind shifted the dirty bags around as if the entire dump were breathing tension. Adrián raised the ribbon in his hand. His gaze was different, harder, sharper. His daughters were in danger, and now he had an enemy, one who acted fast, one who was already there. Julián was breathing quickly, almost hyperventilating. “Sir, what if they were…?” Adrián firmly denied it. “They are alive. I know it. And we will find them before they do.”
The dump awakened, wrapped in a gray light that made everything feel more ominous. The small footprints of Bianca and Abril were still marked on the damp ground, but the ones that chilled the blood were the others—the deep, firm ones, from large boots that didn’t belong to anyone from the day before. Adrián and Julián advanced together, focused, stepping carefully so as not to erase any tracks. Abril’s pink ribbon was clenched between the millionaire’s fingers, held tightly like a piece of life.
The silence of the dump was abnormal. No whispers, no distant footsteps, no voices. A tense silence, as if the place were holding its breath. “The footprints are still around here,” Julián whispered, moving with the familiarity of someone who always navigated that territory. Adrián observed the floor. The large footprints not only led toward the forbidden area of the landfill, there was something else. On the sides, some mounds had been cut into. As if someone had searched desperately.
Later, in the middle of pieces of burnt plastic and rusty metal, they found a piece of the children’s blanket. It was blue. It was stamped with a small, time-worn sun. Adrián lifted it with trembling hands. “This was Bianca’s,” he whispered. Julián nodded, worried. “They didn’t let go of them. They only drop them when they are terrified and someone forces them.” Adrián’s stomach clenched. He didn’t know if it was anger, fear, or a mix of both.
They continued forward. The terrain became increasingly dangerous. High mounds, bent metal, broken glass. Julián moved agilely, but watchfully. A single misstep there could cause a fatal fall. “Do you see that?” the boy asked, pointing to a place where the garbage was more compacted than usual. Adrián crouched down. “They are marks, not from a car, not from a motorcycle, from an industrial wheelbarrow.” Julián swallowed hard. “Those are used by the large collectors, the ones who come at night, but these marks are new, very new.” The millionaire took a deep breath. He instantly connected it in his mind with something he had seen the night before, that white van, almost without lights, moving along the side of the hospital road when he left.
“The people who took my children knew what they were doing,” Adrián said coldly, in a way Julián hadn’t heard before. The boy looked around with increasing anxiety. “Sir, if those people come at night and saw the girls, maybe they didn’t want to take them. Maybe they wanted to hide what the girls knew.” The words hung in the air. Bianca and Abril didn’t talk much, but they had said things in their fever. “Daddy.” “Sun.” “Crying.” Details that could mean more than they seemed.
“Let’s continue,” Adrián ordered. They walked until they reached the area Julián always avoided. A gap between mountains of crushed garbage where almost no light entered and the floor was covered with broken things. Julián took a deep breath. “Children’s footprints shouldn’t be here, but they are.” Adrián saw the three pairs of small prints nestled between two large metal plates. The twins entered, or were forced to enter. “I’ll go first,” Adrián said, carefully setting aside a large piece of plastic.
But before he could proceed, Julián stopped him. “Wait,” he whispered. “There’s something there.” The boy pointed to a spot in the shadow. Adrián squinted. Between two pieces of metal, there was a small, shiny object that didn’t belong in a garbage dump. He crouched down and picked it up. It was a gold pin with a delicate and elegant design, the same pin he had seen many times on his ex-wife’s expensive coat. The millionaire’s breath hitched. “It can’t be,” he whispered, almost voiceless. “This pin is hers.”
Julián looked at him in terror. “Sir, your wife knew the girls were alive.” Adrián closed his eyes for a moment, a second filled with memories that now had a different meaning. The cold call about the fire, the refusal to show the bodies, the strange crying, the hurried burial, the insistence on closing the case. Everything, everything fell into place. “She didn’t just know,” Adrián said gravely. “I think she was here.” Julián backed away, trembling. “And if it was her?” Adrián looked straight at him. “The adult footprints are from a man. But the pin didn’t get here alone.” She was close, very close.
The wind moved the brass. The sound echoed in the confined space. An image formed in both their minds simultaneously. The twins escaping from the hole, two adults following them, and Adrián’s ex-wife watching, directing, or fleeing from something worse. “If she’s involved,” Adrián whispered, “it’s more serious than I thought.” Julián swallowed hard. “The girls are in danger.” Adrián looked at him with a fierce, new, sharp determination. “And that’s why we will find them before they do.”
The footprints continued toward the most unstable part of the landfill, an area where almost no one dared to enter. Adrián and Julián moved toward that point, knowing that every step brought them closer not only to the twins but also to the enemy that was beginning to show its shadow. The air inside the no-go zone of the dump was dense, almost unbreathable. The piles of metal seemed to be leaning, about to fall, forming narrow corridors where light barely entered. Julián stayed close to Adrián, breathing quickly, focused on any sound that wasn’t their own footsteps.
The small footprints were still there, marked in the fine dust. Three pairs, the twins and a lighter step, more hurried, as if they had run. Later, the large footprints of the adults became deeper. The footsteps were firm and determined. Adrián felt a cold fear. “Keep going,” Julián whispered, pointing to a corridor between two blocks of crushed metal. The millionaire waved him on, holding his ex-wife’s pin in his pocket. Every time he touched it, his blood burned.
Suddenly, they heard something. A very short sob. Almost cut off. Adrián turned sharply to Julián. “Did you hear them?” The boy nodded, his eyes wide. They moved toward the sound. The corridor turned, forcing them to move sideways. The shadow was so thick that it seemed to swallow movement. The sob sounded again. This time accompanied by a child’s whisper. Adrián felt his heart tighten. That murmur, that broken way of breathing, was Abril. I know it.
As they rounded the corner, the world seemed to slow down. There, between two mounds of garbage, were the twins, hugging each other, their dirty clothes, their hair trembling, and in front of them, an adult figure. He was crouched down with his back to them, as if examining something between the folds of old blankets. Julián froze. Adrián felt his body stiffen completely. The stranger was wearing large boots, the same ones that left the marks. The man briefly raised his head, alerted by the noise. The face was not visible, just a quick profile, a sturdy person with a dark hood and gloves. When he saw the millionaire, he suddenly stood up and ran toward a side gap, disappearing into the metal before Adrián could reach him. “No!” Julián shouted, but it was too late. The man vanished into the shadow as if the garbage had swallowed him.
Adrián ran to the twins, stopping a few inches away. He couldn’t touch them without permission, he shouldn’t, but his hands trembled as if his whole body demanded otherwise. Bianca looked up. Her eyes were red, wet, full of fear. Abril hid behind her, but she didn’t retreat. Julián knelt down. “It’s me. It’s me. That’s all,” he whispered. “No one is going to hurt them.” The girls, still trembling, clung to him as if the world were collapsing.
Adrián took a deep breath. That man was not looking for garbage. He was looking for the girls, or checking something they had left behind, or waiting for the right moment to take them. The millionaire looked at the spot where he had disappeared. There, on one of the metals, something was carved in white chalk, an initial, a single R. Adrián felt his hands go cold. R. The initial of his ex-wife. Rebeca. Someone had marked that place. Someone who knew the girls. Someone who knew where to hide. The millionaire felt a few seconds away from reaching him, but he still couldn’t grasp it completely.
Bianca raised a trembling hand and pointed to where the man had fled. She didn’t speak, just whispered, almost inaudibly, “Bad.” The world compressed. They knew who he was. They remembered more than they seemed to, and they were closer to danger than Adrián had thought. He took a deep breath, staring into the darkness beneath the landfill. What had happened changed everything, and what was coming would be definitive.
The wind blew dust and ash between the piles of metal. Julián continued to hug the twins, protecting them with his small, trembling body, while Adrián took a few steps toward the shadow where that man had disappeared. The dump was restless, not like a place, but like something about to break, something that had been hidden for months. Adrián turned his gaze to the girls. They were alive, trembling, wide-eyed and dry-lipped, but alive. That was all that mattered.
“We need to get them out of here,” Adrián said without taking his eyes off the passage where the man had fled. Bianca and Abril sighed. Julián calmed them in a low voice, almost a whisper. “I’m with them, I’m going with them. It will be okay.” The girls trusted him. That was clear, but it was also clear that they could no longer survive that hell.
Adrián slowly crouched down, without invading their space, without forcing anything. “I’m going to take them to a safe place,” he said in the softest voice he had. “I won’t separate them from you, Julian. They go with you.” Julián raised his eyes in surprise. The twins, too. It was as if that promise was something they had never heard before. The moment Adrián stretched out his hand toward them, without touching, without forcing, Bianca approached him for the first time. Not completely, but a step, a small step that broke through months of fear.
Then, in the profound silence, they heard an engine. It wasn’t a dump truck, it was something smaller, more controlled, a van. The same one. Adrián felt his pulse hammering at his temples. Julián hugged the twins tighter. The van moved slowly, as if it knew exactly where they were. It stopped a few meters away. The driver’s door opened, and someone Adrián knew too well got out. Long, blonde hair, perfectly combed, even in that hell. His ex-wife, Rebeca.
The twins shrunk from her presence, as if the air was sucking them in. “So you figured it out,” she said in a calm, almost tired voice. Adrián stood between her and the children without hesitation. “You were here, you left your things, you faked everything.” She sighed as if she were weary. “I had no choice,” she answered, taking a step forward. “Your family was taking you out of the company. They were going to hide everything. I made sure you wouldn’t abandon me.” Adrián didn’t recognize her. Not that woman, not that cold version.
“Who left the girls here?” he asked, the pain intense in his voice. Rebeca touched her lips. “Not me, but I know who did. I knew they were going to disappear and I did nothing.” The world stopped. “You knew,” Adrián whispered, “that they were alive.” Rebeca lowered her gaze. For the first time, her mask broke. “I couldn’t risk my life for two girls who weren’t part of my plans.”
Julián took half a step forward, as if he wanted to shout something at her, but Adrián stopped him with a gesture. The millionaire looked at her. “Who was the man in the hood?” he asked. “A collector. He was paid to remove the remains from the fire. I thought he had taken care of them, but when I realized that the boy”—she pointed at Julián with disdain—“was keeping them alive, I knew it was only a matter of time before you found them.”
Adrián felt a cold, sharp, controlled anger. “Did you pay for your children to be taken?” he asked, though he already knew the answer. Rebeca looked at him with an expression not of guilt, but of embarrassment at being discovered. “They weren’t mine,” she answered. “I never planned to be a mother. I never wanted that burden.” The twins cried silently behind Julián. They didn’t understand all the words, but they understood the intention. The coldness, the rejection.
Adrián took a step forward. “They have a father.” He spoke each word filled with truth. “You tried to kill all three of us.” Rebeca took a step back. In the distance, the sound of sirens could be heard. Someone had called the police. Rebeca turned pale. “You can’t do this to me. You promised me.” “I didn’t promise to be an accomplice to your cruelty,” Adrián cut in.
The police arrived before she could escape. The man in the hood was arrested minutes later, hiding amidst the piles. Rebeca was handcuffed. She didn’t cry, she didn’t beg, she just lowered her head because she knew everything was over.
When the dump fell silent, Adrián knelt in front of his twins. He didn’t move suddenly; he just bowed with tears he could no longer hide. “It’s over,” he whispered. “They won’t be afraid anymore.” Bianca approached first. Slowly, with trembling hands, she placed her forehead on her father’s shoulder. It wasn’t a full hug, but it was the start. When Abril saw her sister, she took a small step and joined, putting her cheek on Adrián’s polo shirt.
Julián stood still, watching the scene with a mixture of relief and pain, as if a part of him knew that after that moment, the girls wouldn’t need him anymore. But Adrián turned to him with tears in his eyes. “You are not staying behind,” he said. “You come with us. You are part of this.” Julián blinked several times. His breath hitched. He didn’t know what to do with that phrase. No one had ever said anything like that to him. “Me?” he asked, almost voiceless. “Yes,” Adrián answered. “You saved them. You gave them life, you are family.” The boy lowered his head and broke into a silent sob that had been building up for years. The twins, still trembling, moved toward him and hugged him too. Small, dirty, fragile, but alive. And so, in the middle of the garbage, smoke, and ashes, something was formed that no false document could destroy. A true family.