Part 2:
Alejandro didn't know how long he stood in the doorway. Maybe it was three seconds, maybe ten, but it was enough time for him to see too many things: the empty can, the dry bottle, Carmen's swollen eyes, and Mateo crying with the desperate force of a baby who doesn't yet understand poverty, but already feels it in his body.
Carmen looked up and went white. It wasn't just shame. It was fear. A direct, recognizable fear, as if Alejandro weren't her boss, but someone who had come from a part of her life she had tried to bury deep in her past. She clutched the baby to her chest and took a step back.
"Mr. Alejandro... I... I didn't know you were coming," she said, her voice breaking. "I'm sorry. I'll be back early tomorrow. Please don't fire me."
That last sentence hit him harder than anything else. He didn't think about the marble in his house, or the canceled meetings, or the car waiting downstairs. She thought about how a woman with a hungry baby was still thinking first about not losing a job that barely kept her afloat.
Alejandro entered slowly, not crossing much of the room, like someone entering a place where he has no right to assert his presence. He carried a pharmacy bag. Formula, diapers, saline solution, wipes, some baby food. Simple things. Things that, placed on that worn table, seemed too big and too late.
"I didn't come to say goodbye, Carmen," he said. "I came because I heard your call."
She closed her eyes in shame. A tear rolled down silently. Mateo was still crying, already tired, his little red face pressed against her blouse. Carmen wanted to say something, maybe apologize again, but she couldn't. She just sat on the edge of the bed, as if her body had run out of strength.
Alejandro prepared the bottle with clumsy movements. He had never done one before. He spilled a little water, read the measurement twice, and felt useless in a new, small way. Carmen didn't laugh. She barely gestured with her hand how much to put in, without looking him in the eye. When Mateo took the bottle, the sound in the room changed. It was no longer crying. It was a quick, urgent, sad sucking.
For a few minutes, no one spoke.
Then Carmen murmured,
"You shouldn't be here."
Alejandro thought she meant it because of the neighborhood, the poverty, the discomfort. But when she opened a drawer and took out a folded, old folder, covered in damp stains, he understood it was something else. She placed it on the bed without letting go of the baby. On the cover was a name written in smudged ink: Diego Ramírez.
"My husband worked on a project for your company," Carmen said. "Not directly with you, that's what they said. They always say that. That the owner doesn't know. That the owner doesn't sign off on things. That the owner doesn't see."
Alejandro felt the air in the room thicken.
"What project?"
Carmen looked at him for the first time with something other than fear. There was weariness in her eyes, but also an old rage, kept hidden out of necessity.
“The Santa Fe tower. The one they inaugurated with photos, speeches, and champagne. Diego fell from the twelfth floor because the harnesses were expired. They told me he didn't wear safety equipment because he was irresponsible. That there would be no compensation. That if I insisted, they could accuse him of negligence and ruin his name.”
Alejandro didn't answer. Not because he didn't want to. Because suddenly several words got stuck in his throat: impossible, I didn't know, I need to check, that can't be. They all sounded equally useless.
Carmen lowered her gaze to Mateo.
“I went to their offices pregnant. I asked to speak with someone. They left me waiting for four hours in reception. Then a lawyer told me to accept ten thousand pesos and sign a non-disclosure agreement. I didn't sign. After that, they stopped answering me.
” Alejandro vaguely remembered an email, months ago, about a “closed workplace incident.” He had forwarded it to the legal department without reading it completely. He had a meeting in New York. A dinner. A flight. A life too busy to watch the death of a man whose son now drank milk as if he'd been fighting for every drop for days.
He sat in the only chair in the room. Not as the boss. As someone who had just discovered that his comfort was built on a buried file.
"Carmen… I didn't know."
She gave a low, joyless laugh.
"That's what scares me most, sir. That you can destroy a life without even knowing."
Alejandro lowered his head. That sentence didn't insult him. She settled him in his seat.
A car horn honked downstairs. Then footsteps on the stairs. Carmen tensed immediately. She clutched the folder to her chest and whispered that she had to leave, that if Attorney Ortiz had followed him, everything was going to get worse. Alejandro looked up.
"Ortiz? My lawyer?"
Before Carmen could answer, someone knocked on the door.
It wasn't a visitor's knock.
It was a warning knock.
And a familiar, cold, perfectly polite voice spoke from the hallway:
“Mr. Montes, stay away from that woman. There are things you still don’t understand about this case.”
Alejandro looked at Carmen, then at Mateo, then at the folder clutched in his hands.
And for the first time in his life, he understood that the danger wasn’t outside his company.
It had been sitting in his own office for years.
What happened next…?
PART 3: on the next page.
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