The call came a little after noon, right when Tomás Aguilar was in the middle of a meeting about a property deal that was supposed to close before sunset.

The screen showed an unknown number.

He almost ignored it.

Almost.

For some reason he could never explain later, he excused himself, stepped away from the conference table, and answered.

“Hello?”

There was a breath on the other end, small and shaky.

Then a voice he knew better than his own.

“Daddy.”

Tomás straightened so fast his chair scraped across the floor.

“Santiago? Why are you calling from another phone? What happened?”

His six-year-old son swallowed hard enough that Tomás heard it through the speaker.

“Daddy, Alma won’t wake up.”

For one suspended second, the hallway around him disappeared.

“What do you mean she won’t wake up? Where are you? Where’s your mother?”

“She isn’t here.

She left on Friday.

We don’t have any food.

Alma got really hot, and she won’t open her eyes.” Santiago’s voice cracked.

“Daddy, I’m hungry.”

Tomás had built a fortune by staying calm when other men panicked.

He had negotiated hostile takeovers, weathered public scandals, and stared down debt when he was younger and hungrier and far more afraid.

None of that training helped him now.

He ran.

He left the meeting, the deal, the assistants calling his name, all of it.

In the elevator, he dialed Leticia.

No answer.

He called again.

Straight to voicemail.

A third time.

A fourth.

By the time he reached the parking garage, he was shaking.

The drive to Leticia’s neighborhood usually took forty-five minutes in midday traffic.

He made it in twenty-eight.

He did not remember half the red lights.

He parked crooked at the curb and sprinted to the house where his children lived most of the time, the house he had helped pay for after the divorce because Leticia had refused everything else.

She had refused his extra money, his offers of a better school district, his requests for a nanny, his quiet attempts to buy away guilt.

“I don’t need your charity,” she had told him more than once.

“Just send what the court ordered and show up when you say you’ll show up.”

He had hated the bitterness in her voice.

He had hated even more that she wasn’t completely wrong.

He pounded on the front door.

“Santiago! It’s Daddy! Open up!”

Nothing.

He tried the handle.

Unlocked.

The house smelled stale, like heat and old dishes and closed windows.

The curtains were half drawn, making the living room look dim even though it was still early afternoon.

Santiago sat on the rug hugging a couch pillow to his chest.

The child looked smaller than he had two days earlier.

His face was dirty, his lips were split, and his eyes had the swollen shine of someone who had cried until there were no tears left.

“Daddy,” he said, and that one word contained fear, relief, and the last thread of trust he had left.

Tomás dropped to his knees and caught the boy with one arm.

“Where’s Alma?”

Santiago pointed.

Alma lay on the sofa under a thin blanket decorated with faded stars.

She did not stir when Tomás touched her.

Her skin burned under his hand.

Her eyelashes were stuck to cheeks