At exactly 2:17 that afternoon, Ricardo called me.
I let it ring three times before answering.
His voice no longer sounded arrogant.
It sounded terrified.
—“Mariana… there has to be some mistake.”
I looked out the window of the armored SUV transporting me through Mexico City.
—“What kind of mistake?”
Silence.
Then breathing.
Uneven.
—“Halcón Norte canceled my consulting contract.”
There it was.
The panic.
Not because of family.
Not because of shame.
Money.
Status.
Power.
That’s what frightened Ricardo.
I leaned back slowly.
The leather seat smelled expensive.
Safe.
For the first time in days, I wasn’t cold.
—“That’s unfortunate,” I replied calmly.
—“Please don’t do this.”
I almost laughed.
Do this?
As if I had forced him to throw a pregnant widow into a freezing garage hours after burying her husband.
As if consequences appeared out of nowhere.
His voice dropped lower.
Desperate now.
—“You don’t understand. If I lose this deal, everything falls apart.”
And then…
something in my chest tightened.
Because I suddenly remembered something Diego once told me.
A sentence I hadn’t understood until now.
“Never trust men who get rich around military contracts too fast.”
I sat upright.
—“What exactly falls apart, Ricardo?”
He went silent immediately.
Too silent.
And that silence told me everything.
That night, inside the secure residence Halcón Norte had assigned me, I requested access to Diego’s final operation files.
At first, they denied me.
Then I used my new credentials.
Thirty minutes later…
I found Ricardo’s name.
Attached to communications subcontracting.
Attached to emergency relay equipment.
Attached to the exact operation where Diego’s team lost signal.
My blood turned to ice.
No.
No, no, no.
I opened the reports again.
Reviewed dates.
Equipment logs.
Failure points.
And then I saw the line that made my hands start shaking
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