She stared up at him with a kind of faith that didn’t make sense.
Faith was for church.
Not for men like him.
Yet there it was—raw and impossible—written across the face of a child.
Something moved inside Vicente.
A tiny crack in a wall he’d spent decades building.
Thirty years earlier, Vicente had loved a woman named María.
He’d loved her badly—like a young man with anger in his bones and no idea how to hold something gentle without crushing it.
María’s laugh had been the only thing that made his world feel human.
They’d talked about leaving. About a house far away from gunshots. About children.
And then, one night, his enemies didn’t come for him.
They came for her.
Vicente arrived too late.
You always arrive too late to the thing you’ll never fix.
After that, he put ice around his heart and called it survival.
Nobody got in.
Nobody made him soft.
Nobody made him vulnerable.
Until this girl—shaking, bleeding fear, gripping his sleeve—pulled a memory out of his chest like a knife.
“What’s your name?” Vicente asked.
His voice came out softer than anyone at the table had ever heard.
That softness made the men beside him shift uncomfortably, like they’d just watched a lion blink.
The girl sniffed. “Sofía,” she said. “Sofía Martínez.”
Vicente lifted his eyes to his right-hand man, Toño Rojas.
One look.
That was all it took.
“Get the car,” Vicente said.
Toño hesitated—an instinctive pause more than disobedience.
“Boss—”
“Now, Toño.”
Not louder.
Not angrier.
Just final.
Toño moved.
Vicente crouched slightly until his face was level with Sofía’s.
“Sofía,” he said, steady, “I’m going to help you. But you have to tell me where your mother is.”
Sofía’s lips trembled.
“The flower shop,” she said. “In Doctores. Flores Martínez. They—” Her voice broke. “They left her on the floor. There was… there was a lot.”
Vicente’s jaw tightened so hard it looked painful.
He closed his eyes for a half-second, like he was swallowing something sharp.
Then he stood.
“Let’s go.”
The Ride
The trip was short.
And somehow endless.
Mexico City streamed past the windows: wet asphalt, neon signs, street vendors pulling tarps over their carts.
Sofía sat beside Vicente in the back seat, too drained to cry anymore. She stared at his hands like she was afraid he might disappear if she looked away.
Vicente noticed.
And it messed with him more than it should have.
A child should never have to study an adult’s hands to feel safe.
When they reached the street, Vicente saw the chaos before they even stopped.
Glass glittered on the sidewalk like a broken promise.
Flower pots were overturned, dirt spilled like someone had ripped the earth open.
Petals were crushed underfoot—reds and whites pressed into the ground like tiny bruises.
The shop sign—FLORES MARTÍNEZ—hung crooked, swinging slightly in the wind.
Inside, behind the counter, lay a woman.
