If you came here from Facebook looking to find out what happened to Roberto and the mysterious factory worker who had the eyes of his lost daughter, take a deep breath. What you’re about to read is more twisted and heartbreaking than you can imagine.

Get ready because this story has twists that will leave you frozen.

The Foreman Knew Something

The construction foreman came running in, his face red with fury.

—Mr. Mendoza! Get away from that girl right now!

I stared at him, confused. I still had Lucia’s hands in mine.

“This worker is trouble,” the foreman continued shouting. “She’s only been here a week and she’s already causing problems. She can’t be bothering the investors!”

Lucía pulled away from me abruptly. She was trembling all over.

—I didn’t do anything wrong, Don Arturo. The man grabbed me.

I felt rage. A rage I hadn’t felt since the day I lost my Sofia.

“How dare you speak to her like that?” I snapped at the foreman. “This girl hasn’t done anything to you.”

Don Arturo looked at me as if I had gone crazy.

—With all due respect, Mr. Mendoza, you don’t know these people. They’re all liars. They come from who knows where, without papers, making up stories to elicit sympathy.

Something in her tone made me even angrier. But it also made me think.

Without papers? Where did this girl come from?

I looked at Lucia. She kept her eyes on the ground, but I saw something in her expression. Fear. A deep fear that went beyond losing a job.

“Where do you live?” I asked gently.

She hesitated. She bit her lip.

—In… in a rented room. In the San Miguel neighborhood.

-With who?

—With my grandmother. I already told her.

—And your parents?

Her face tensed. A tear rolled down her dirty cheek.

—I don’t know them, sir. My grandmother says they abandoned me when I was a baby.

My world stopped again.

Baby. Abandoned. Grandmother.

The pieces were starting to fit together in a horrible way.

-How old are you?

—Twenty-three, I think. My grandmother isn’t quite sure.

Twenty-three. My Sofia would be twenty-three years old if she were still alive.

The foreman huffed impatiently.

—Mr. Mendoza, you really shouldn’t waste your time with…

“Shut up!” I yelled at him. “You’re fired. Get out of here right now.”

Don Arturo paled. He opened his mouth to protest, but something in my gaze stopped him.

He left muttering curses.

When we were alone, well, as alone as you can be in the middle of a construction site with fifty workers watching, I knelt in front of Lucia.

She backed away in fear.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I told her. “I just need you to listen to me. Twenty years ago, I lost my daughter in a park. Her name was Sofia. She was three years old. She had your eyes. And she had three moles on her neck, right here.”

I pointed out the place where I had seen the marks.

Lucia instinctively put her hand to her neck.

—Many people have moles, sir.

—Not like those. They formed a perfect triangle. My wife said they were the three stars of Orion’s Belt.

I saw something change in his expression. A flash of recognition.

“My grandmother…” she whispered. “My grandmother always tells me that my freckles are special. That they’re a sign from heaven.”

My heart was beating so hard I thought it was going to explode.

—Can I see them?

She hesitated for a long moment. Then, slowly, she took off her vest and lowered the collar of her sweaty t-shirt.

There they were.

Three polka dots. Forming a perfect triangle.

The stars of Orion.

I broke down. I fell to my knees in the mud and cried like I hadn’t cried since my wife’s funeral.

“It’s you,” she sobbed. “You’re my little girl. You’re my Sofia.”

Lucía was also crying, but from confusion.

—I don’t understand anything, sir. I’m not your daughter. My grandmother raised me for as long as I can remember.

—What is your grandmother’s name?

—Mrs. Mercedes Fuentes.

That name didn’t ring a bell at all. But that didn’t mean anything.

The kidnappers do not use their real names.

“I need to meet her,” I told him. “I need to talk to her.”

Lucia wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

—She’s very sick. She hardly ever gets out of bed.

—Then I’ll come to your house. Please. Give me that chance.

She looked at me with those green eyes, identical to her mother’s, identical to my Sofia’s.

And he nodded.

The Journey to Truth

I told my driver to take us to the San Miguel neighborhood.

Lucía sat silently in the back seat. I kept looking at her in the rearview mirror.

Every gesture. Every movement. I looked for traces of my daughter in her.

Would he smile the same? Would he have the same quirks?

But twenty years is a long time. People change. Children become strange.

“Are you sure about this, sir?” my driver asked in a low voice.

—More than anything in my life.

We arrived at an area that I didn’t even know existed in my city.

Unpaved streets. Houses made of sheet metal and wood. Electrical wires hanging precariously.

My shiny Mercedes looked out of place like a diamond in a garbage dump.

—It’s here—said Lucia, pointing to a small house painted in faded blue.

We went downstairs. The neighbors looked at us with suspicion and curiosity.

Lucía opened the door. It had no lock, only a padlock which she removed with a rusty key.

“Grandma,” he called. “I’ve brought a visitor.”

The smell hit me first. Dampness, disease, poverty.

The house had only one room that served as a living room, kitchen, and bedroom.

On an old cot, covered with threadbare blankets, lay an elderly woman.

She must have been eighty years old, maybe older. Her skin was like wrinkled paper. Her eyes were clouded by cataracts.

But when she saw me come in, those eyes opened with a terror that confirmed all my suspicions.

“Who is it?” she asked, her voice trembling.

—He’s my boss, Grandma. The owner of the construction company where I work.

The old woman tried to sit up, but a violent cough shook her.

Lucia ran to help her.

I stood at the entrance, watching.

There were photos on the walls. Lucia as a child. Lucia as a teenager. Lucia graduating from high school.

But no baby photos. No photos from her early years.

—Doña Mercedes—I said, approaching her—. I need to ask you some questions.

She coughed again. When she took her hand away from her mouth, I saw blood on her fingers.

—I have nothing to say to you.

—Where did you get Lucia from?

The silence that followed was deafening.

Lucia looked at both of us, uncomprehending.

—What are you talking about? Grandma, what do you mean?

The old woman closed her eyes. Tears rolled down her sunken cheeks.

“I knew this day would come,” she whispered. “I knew I couldn’t keep the secret forever.”

My heart raced.

“What secret?” Lucia asked, her voice breaking.

Doña Mercedes opened her eyes and looked at her granddaughter with heartbreaking love.

—Forgive me, my child. Forgive me for everything.

“What did you do?” Lucia asked, stepping back. “Grandma, what did you do?”

The old woman turned towards me.

“I didn’t kidnap her,” he said firmly. “I saved her.”

Those words left me frozen.

—You saved her? You stole her from me! You took my daughter away!

“No!” the old woman cried with surprising force. “I found her. I found her crying in the street, dirty, hungry, abandoned. And nobody, NOBODY, was looking for her.”

—That’s a lie! We moved heaven and earth! I offered rewards! It was all over the news!

Doña Mercedes shook her head.

—That was later. Much later. When I found her, she had been lost for days. Days. A three-year-old child, alone in the streets, eating from the garbage.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

—No… it’s not possible.

“My husband worked at the station,” the old woman continued. “He told me that if I brought her back, they would investigate me. That they would accuse me of kidnapping. That no one would believe me. So I decided… I decided to keep her.”

Lucia was sobbing.

—It can’t be true. Tell me it’s not true.

But deep down, a horrible part of me knew it made sense.

The day I lost Sofia, I was on my phone. Closing a deal. Not paying attention to her.

My wife was at home, sick.

The nanny was new. Young. Irresponsible.

By the time I realized Sofia wasn’t there, hours had already passed.

Hours? No. Days. Because first we thought she’d be with her mother. Then with the nanny. Then with some relative.

Bureaucracy slowed us down. Disbelief slowed us down.

By the time it came out in the news, almost a week had passed.

Doña Mercedes was right about one terrible thing.

I had lost my daughter long before someone took her away.

The Impossible Decision

I sat down on the floor. My legs could no longer support me.

Lucia hugged herself, trembling.

—So… I’m Sofia? —she asked, her voice breaking.

The old woman nodded.

—You always were, my love. But you were also always my Lucia. I raised you. I gave you everything I could. I loved you like a daughter.

—You lied to me my whole life!

—I protected you your whole life— Doña Mercedes corrected. —Do you think it would have been better to grow up knowing that your real parents neglected you so much that they lost you?

Those words pierced me like knives.

Because he was right.

I had neglected my daughter. I had been so busy building my empire that I forgot to take care of my family.

When Sofia disappeared, my wife fell into a depression from which she never recovered. She died two years later.

The doctor said it was a heart attack. But I knew the truth.

She died of sadness. Of guilt. Of a broken heart.

And I kept working. Building buildings. Making money.

Trying to fill the void with material things.

Until today, when I saw those green eyes in the middle of a construction site.

“What do you want from me?” Lucia asked, looking at me. “What do you expect me to do?”

That was a good question.

What did you expect?

Would he leave everything and come live in my mansion?

Would he forget the twenty years of life he had built?

Why would he call a millionaire stranger “dad”?

“I don’t know,” I admitted honestly. “I only know that I spent twenty years dying inside. Twenty years wondering what became of you. If you suffered. If you were hurt. If you thought of me.”

—I never thought about you—Lucía said harshly—. Because I never knew you existed.

His words hurt more than any physical blow.

But they were fair.

Doña Mercedes coughed again. This time more violently. Blood stained the blankets.

“Grandma!” Lucia shouted, running towards her.

I approached as well.

“He needs a hospital,” I said. “Now.”

“There’s no money for hospitals,” the old woman murmured.

—I’ll take care of everything. I’ll call my personal physician.

“I don’t want your charity,” Doña Mercedes said proudly.

“It’s not charity. It’s the least I can do for the woman who took care of my daughter when I couldn’t.”

The old woman looked at me in surprise.

Lucia too.

I took out my cell phone and called my doctor. I explained the situation to him.

In less than thirty minutes, a private ambulance arrived at the San Miguel neighborhood.

The neighbors came out to watch the show.

The paramedics put Mrs. Mercedes on a stretcher.

“Lucía,” the old woman said, taking her granddaughter’s hand. “Whatever happens, remember that I loved you. That everything I did was out of love.”

—I know, Grandma. I know.

The ambulance took her away. I told Lucia we would follow in my car.

During the journey to the hospital, neither of them spoke.

There was too much to say and no way to say it.