At 6:37 a.m., Andrés Herrera left his apartment in Colonia Obrera with his pulse hammering and a cheap briefcase tucked under his arm.

His eight-year-old daughter Sofía was still asleep on the foldout couch, curled around a stuffed rabbit with her inhaler on the crate that served as a nightstand.

In the kitchenette, his mother Rosa pretended to drink coffee so he would not notice she had skipped breakfast again.

Everyone in that apartment understood what the hearing meant.

If Andrés lost, the company that ruined his name would win a judgment for legal fees, and the little family would likely lose the home they were barely holding onto.

For nine years, Andrés had been the man tenants trusted at Santa Emilia Residences, a fading complex of old brick buildings, rusted railings, and elderly residents who still called maintenance requests by knocking directly on his door.

He could coax life out of broken boilers, patch pipes with almost no budget, and calm frightened tenants when elevators stalled between floors.

He was not polished, not educated in the way lawyers respected, but he was reliable.

That mattered until Altavista Residential Group bought the property and decided reliability was less valuable than speed, silence, and signatures on whatever paperwork moved people out.

Paula Aguilar arrived with corporate binders, perfume that announced her before her voice did, and a smile that never reached her eyes.

At first she called Andrés indispensable.

Then she began sliding inspection reports across his desk with highlighted sections already marked for his signature.

Several units were being labeled unsafe, even when he had not inspected them or had already repaired the problems cheaply.

Long-term tenants who paid low rent started receiving notices that their apartments needed to be vacated for emergency rehabilitation.

Andrés understood what was happening before most residents did.

The company wanted the building emptied, renovated, and relaunched at triple the price.

He might have kept his head down if the scheme had been only numbers on paper.

Then a widow named Mercedes Castañeda received a jolt from an exposed wire in her kitchen after management delayed an approved repair order for three weeks.

She was not killed, but the shock sent her to the hospital and terrified everyone on the floor.

Paula came to the maintenance office that same night with a replacement report already typed.

She wanted Andrés to sign a backdated inspection saying the repair had been completed earlier and that any later tampering must have been done by the tenant.

When he refused, she stopped pretending to like him.

Two days later Andrés was summoned to a conference room where attorney Gabriel Salgado sat at the end of the table in an expensive navy suit, turning a pen between his fingers like a man who enjoyed making other people wait.

Salgado spoke softly, which made the threat worse.

He explained that accidents created exposure and exposure demanded a story the court could understand.

According to the file in front of him, Andrés had failed to perform scheduled maintenance, had taken cash from tenants for side repairs, and had falsified work logs to cover the negligence.

Andrés stared at the papers and saw forged initials beside entries he had never written.

He was fired before lunch.

By evening, word had spread through property