Chapter 6 - The Broken Monster
Inside the apartment, something heavy crashed to the floor.
Within seconds, the inner wooden door swung open. Don Ernesto stood in the threshold, holding an unlit cigarette in one trembling hand and a half-empty tumbler of cheap tequila in the other. His eyes were wide, sunken, and feral with shock.
"What did you say?" Ernesto hissed, his voice rattling in his throat.
Miguel didn't argue. He gently nudged Canela forward into the shaft of light falling across the concrete porch.
The old man froze. The glass tumbler slipped from his fingers, shattering against the concrete step, spraying amber alcohol and ice cubes over his slippers. His cigarette tumbled into the puddle. Ernesto’s gaze dropped to the dog’s white chest patch, then to the scars along her ribs, and finally to her weary, unmistakable amber eyes.
"Canela...?" Ernesto whispered, dropping heavily to his knees right into the broken glass, completely oblivious to the shards biting into his skin. "No... no, Javier told me she was hit by a gravel truck the day Sofia died. He told me he buried her behind the workshop..."
Canela did not growl this time. She took one hesitant, limping step forward and pressed her muzzle into the old man's weathered palm. A low, keening whimper escaped Ernesto’s chest—a sound not of rage, but of a broken, grieving father whose world had just collapsed around him.
Lupita stepped forward and pulled the yellowed legal note and the laminated photograph from her pocket, pressing them into Ernesto’s shaking hands.
"Read it, Don Ernesto," Lupita said gently. "Your daughter survived that wreck. She was hiding Mateo at the old lime quarry. Javier lied to you about everything."
Ernesto brought the paper close to his face under the porch light. His eyes traced every curve of his daughter’s handwriting. As he read the words, the bitter, tyrannical mask he wore for the world stripped away completely, revealing a devastated old man hollowed out by grief.
"Javier..." Ernesto choked out, his knuckles turning white as he crumpled the edge of the paper. "My own brother. When the company went into debt, he wanted to sell the quarry land to a chemical waste syndicate. Sofia had the deed in her mother's trust. She refused to sign it over. He told me... he told me she fled with a boyfriend, and then the wreck happened..."
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He looked up at Miguel, his eyes burning with a terrifying, ferocious clarity. All the alcohol seemed to evaporate from his blood in a single heartbeat.
"Get your truck," Ernesto ordered, rising to his feet with an agility that defied his age. He reached inside his door frame and grabbed a heavy steel crowbar and a flashlight from his tool rack. "We're going to the quarry. Now."
