The girl hesitated, then nodded. With careful fingers, she lifted the edge of the cloth. Inside were rolls, shells, small loaves—still warm, steam faintly visible despite the rain. She had wrapped them with care, as if they were fragile.
Then Diego saw her hand.
On her left ring finger rested a silver ring. Simple at first glance, but unmistakably crafted by someone who cared. The metal was etched, not mass-produced. At its center, a pale blue topaz caught the gray light of the storm and scattered it softly.
The world tilted.
Diego’s breath stopped—not dramatically, not suddenly—but as if his lungs had simply forgotten what to do.
He knew that ring.
He had designed it himself sixteen years ago, sitting in a tiny workshop with a jeweler who charged too much and talked too little. He had insisted on the stone. Insisted on the engraving hidden inside, invisible unless you knew to look.
D & X. Forever.
He had slipped that ring onto Ximena’s finger the night before she disappeared.
She had been three months pregnant.
She left a letter. One he could recite without effort. One that lived in his bones.
Diego swallowed.
“What’s your name?” he asked, forcing his voice to behave.
The girl clutched the basket tighter.
“Cecilia… sir,” she said softly.
The sound of the name landed like a blow.
Cecilia.
Ximena had said it a hundred times. If it’s a girl, she’d said, Cecilia—after my grandmother. Soft, strong, unbreakable.
Diego didn’t think. He reached into his pocket, pulled out cash, and bought the entire basket. He paid far more than necessary, added another bill without looking.
Cecilia’s eyes widened.
“No, sir… it’s too much.”
“It’s not,” he said gently. “And if you or your mother ever need anything—anything at all—call me.”
He handed her a business card. Not the one with assistants and corporate titles. The one with a private number only a few people had ever been given.
She took it carefully, as if it might dissolve in her wet fingers.
Rain ran down Diego’s face—water indistinguishable from something else now. He stood there as she walked away, barefoot against the flooded stone, disappearing into the curtain of rain.
His body screamed at him to follow her.
To grab her hand.
To turn the ring, to check the engraving.
To ask where her mother was.
To say the words he had carried silently for sixteen years:
I’m your father.
But he didn’t.
He stood still, heart shaking, letting the storm soak him to the bone, because some truths—when found too suddenly—must be held gently, or they shatter.
Behind him, the traffic light turned green.
Diego didn’t move.
That night, in his apartment in Polanco , the city lit up beyond the glass, Diego couldn’t sleep.
He took out a yellowed letter from Ximena, folded until it seemed about to break. The delicate handwriting still stung him:
“My Diego… forgive me for not telling you to your face. If I look you in the eyes, I won’t leave. I have to leave to keep you alive. My brother Damián got mixed up with dangerous people… I’m three months pregnant. Don’t look for me. Please…”
For years he hired investigators, followed false leads, changed names. He never married, never loved another person without feeling like he was betraying a ghost.
And now, a girl with Ximena’s ring had appeared selling bread in the rain.
The next day, Diego called a discreet man, one of those who don’t ask questions:
—Find Cecilia. But carefully. Without scaring her. Don’t let her know anything.
SEE CONTINUES ON THE NEXT PAGE
