Don Ricardo felt the paper burning between his fingers.

“What does he say?” Teresa asked, almost voiceless.

He swallowed before answering.

—He says we should go to the basement… before they come back.

Teresa paled.

-Who is it?

Don Ricardo did not answer.

Because, deep down, they both thought the same thing.

Luis and Mariana.

The old man looked up and scanned the cabin again.

She looked humble, but not neglected.

Everything was too clean.

Too willing.

As if someone had been waiting for that exact moment.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Teresa whispered.

—Ni yo.

Then a noise was heard.

A dry crackle.

Outside.

Like tires hitting gravel.

The two of them remained motionless.

It wasn’t imagination.

It was an engine.

Distant, but getting closer.

Teresa put a hand to her mouth.

—No… it can’t be.

Don Ricardo pressed the note.

—To the basement. Now.

They looked around and saw a wooden trapdoor at the back, half-hidden under a rough rug.

Don Ricardo lifted her up in one swift motion.

Below was a metal ring.

He opened it with effort.

A blast of cold air rose from the darkness.

It didn’t smell like confinement.

It smelled of earth, of old wood… and something more.

To life.

They went down a narrow staircase as best they could.

Don Ricardo closed the trapdoor above their heads just as the noise of the engine stopped in front of the cabin.

The darkness was almost total.

Only a sliver of light filtered through the boards.

Teresa was breathing so heavily it seemed as if her chest was going to burst.

—Ricardo… I’m scared.

He groped for her hand.

-Me too.

Suddenly, a spark lit up the basement.

An oil lamp.

Someone had turned it on.

The two of them jumped.

And then they saw the woman.

She was old.

Slim.

White hair gathered in a long braid.

A face marked by the sun and by years that had not been kind.

But his eyes were alive.

Pay attention.

Painfully attentive.

“Speak softly,” she whispered. “If you’re who I think you are, you don’t have much time.”

Teresa stepped back, frightened.

-Who are you?

The woman placed the lamp on a box.

—My name is Eulalia. And they are not the first parents to arrive here trembling, with sand in their clothes and betrayal in their eyes.

Don Ricardo felt his stomach clench.

—What are you saying?

Eulalia looked at him with a sad harshness.

—Your children didn’t invent this. Someone taught them.

Upstairs, the cabin door burst open.

The three of them froze.

Footsteps were heard.

A heavy one.

Another lighter one.

Teresa began to cry silently.

Don Ricardo looked up at the wooden ceiling.

He recognized that way of walking.

Luis.

And Mariana.

His blood ran cold.

“They followed us,” he murmured.

Eulalia shook her head.

—No. They didn’t follow them. They came back because they were there for something.

Upstairs, Luis’s voice could be heard.

—I told you they came in here.

Mariana answered nervously.

—We shouldn’t be doing this.

—We’ve already started. Now we’re finishing.

Don Ricardo closed his eyes.

There was no doubt.

It wasn’t desperation.

It was a decision.

His children had returned.

Not out of guilt.

Not to save them.

To top it all off.

Eulalia approached a shelf and removed some blankets.

Behind it appeared a narrow iron door.

“If they’ve come down here, there’s no more time for lies,” he said. “They have a right to know.”

He opened the door.

On the other side there was a small room.

Full of boxes.

Archivists.

Photographs.

Folders with handwritten names.

Teresa looked at everything without understanding.

-What is this?

Eulalia held the lamp higher.

—Proof of what they have been doing for years.

Don Ricardo frowned.

Eulalia took out a folder and handed it to him.

There were two names on the cover.

Luis Fernández.

Mariana Fernández.

Don Ricardo’s hands began to tremble.

He opened the folder.

Inside there were copies of documents.

Companies.

Photographs taken from a distance.

Account statements.

And a sheet with a list of properties sold after the death or disappearance of elderly people.

Teresa let out a muffled sound.

—No… no… that can’t be.

Eulalia looked at her with pity.

—I wish I were wrong.

Don Ricardo continued turning pages.

In one photo, Luis appeared talking to a man in front of a notary’s office.

In another, Mariana was helping an elderly woman she didn’t recognize get out of a car.

In another one, the same woman appeared sitting alone in front of this cabin.

The date was eight months ago.

Teresa began to tremble from head to toe.

—What did our children do?

Eulalia clenched her jaw.

—The same thing they tried to do to you.

Up above, a sharp knock echoed above the trapdoor.

Luis was moving things around.

Searching.

Mariana’s voice sounded more broken.

—I don’t see anyone.

—Then they’re downstairs —Luis said—. That old woman always hides them first.

Don Ricardo raised his head.

-Always?

Eulalia nodded.

And for the first time, her voice broke.

—My son also brought me here three years ago.

Nobody said anything.

The lamp trembled slightly in his hand.

He pulled me out of the car crying. He hugged me. He told me it was out of necessity. That he would come back later. But he didn’t come alone. There were others like him. Sons, nephews, even grandsons. They brought their elderly relatives. They took their properties beforehand, made them sign powers of attorney, sales agreements, waivers… and then abandoned them here for the desert to finish the job.

Teresa covered her mouth with both hands.

-My God…

“I survived because I found this cabin,” Eulalia continued. “It belonged to my father. He used it when he was smuggling goods across the border decades ago. Then I started noticing patterns. Different cars. The same fear in the eyes of those who arrived. I began gathering evidence. Hiding people. Waiting for the right moment.”

Don Ricardo looked down at the folder.

His children were not only cruel.

They were part of something much worse.

Upstairs another bang was heard.

Stronger.

The trapdoor vibrated.

Luis had found the rug.

“Get out of here immediately,” he shouted. “Don’t complicate this.”

Teresa clung to Ricardo’s arm.

—What are we going to do?

Eulalia took a deep breath and opened another box.

She pulled out an old satellite phone.

—Two days ago I managed to send a message to a rural patrol. I gave them coordinates. I told them they would return today for hidden documents. But if they don’t arrive in time…

He didn’t finish the sentence.

It wasn’t necessary.

Mariana started crying upstairs.

—Luis, please… this is already bad.

—Shut up. They’ve already signed everything. If we find them alive, they’ll ruin us.

Don Ricardo felt something inside him break.

Not with noise.

Not with anger.

With a deeper kind of pain.

The pain of discovering that the son he carried on his shoulders had become a stranger.

And that this stranger was willing to bury them.

Then he did something Teresa didn’t expect.

He straightened up.

He dried his face.

And he closed the folder.

—I’m not going to hide anymore.

Teresa looked at him in horror.

Ricardo, no.

He turned towards her.

Her eyes were filled with tears, but also with a firmness she hadn’t seen for years.

—They stole our old age, Teresa. I’m not going to give them the truth too.

Before I could stop him, Don Ricardo walked towards the stairs.

Luis had already lifted the trapdoor half a hand’s breadth when a voice emerged from below.

His father’s voice.

Firm.

Clara.

Impossible to mistake.

—Don’t take another step, son.

There was a brutal silence.

Then the lid opened completely.

The light of the sunset fell upon Luis’s face.

He was pale.

Sweating.

With a wrench in his hand.

Mariana was behind him, crying.

Upon seeing his parents alive, he recoiled as if he had seen ghosts.

—Dad… Mom…

Don Ricardo climbed one step.

—No. Don’t call us that if you came to finish us off.

Luis tightened his jaw.

—You don’t understand anything.

—Explain it to me—said Don Ricardo—. Explain to me how a son decides to let those who fed him die.

Luis lowered his gaze for barely a second.

And that second was enough to reveal what was underneath.

Fear.

Despair.

And something darker.

“I had no way out,” he said. “I owed money. A lot. You had the house, the land, the deeds. Mariana and I had already signed with those people.”

“What people?” Teresa asked from below.

Mariana collapsed.

—A network. They target elderly people living alone. They promise their families a share. They get them lawyers, papers, buyers. If everything goes smoothly, they pay. If not… they make everyone disappear.

Eulalia followed them up with the lamp held high.

—And today they were planning to take my evidence.

Luis looked at her with hatred.

—You should have died years ago.

Mariana let out a moan.

Teresa closed her eyes as if that sentence had stabbed her.

But Eulalia did not tremble.

—And you should have remembered who taught you to walk.

Suddenly, in the distance, another engine could be heard.

Then another one.

And one more.

They were not echoes.

They were pickup trucks.

Luis turned towards the door.

The blood drained from his face.

—No…

Eulalia picked up the satellite phone.

-Yeah.

Mermaids.

In the middle of the desert.

Sharp. Real. Getting closer.

Luis tried to run, but Don Ricardo blocked his path.

Not forcefully.

Something worse.

With your eyes.

“Not once,” she said, her voice breaking. “Not once did you go without a plate at our table. And yet you chose to make us a burden.”

Luis wanted to speak, but he couldn’t.

The sirens were already surrounding the cabin.

Mariana fell to her knees.

—Sorry, Mom… sorry…

Teresa cried, but did not move towards her.

Because there are wounds that bleed even when the guilty party begs.

Minutes later, uniformed men entered, secured the area, and took the folders.

Eulalia handed over years of evidence with a steady hand.

Names.

Dates.

Properties.

Accounts.

Everything.

The network went down that same week.

Not only in that desert.

Also in cities, notary offices, offices and houses where for years greed had been disguised as need.

Luis was arrested at the door of the cabin.

Mariana too.

She couldn’t stop crying.

He kept looking at the ground.

Don Ricardo and Teresa were taken to a medical center.

They were dehydrated, exhausted, and wounded inside in ways that couldn’t be seen on x-rays.

But they were alive.

And that time, living meant more than just breathing.

Months later, with legal help and Eulalia’s statement, they recovered what little they had left.

The house.

Their names.

Their dignity.

And when it was all over, Don Ricardo made a decision that surprised everyone.

He didn’t sell the house.

He turned it into a refuge.

For abandoned elderly people.

For men and women who still trembled when they heard their children call them a “burden”.

He called it The Last Embrace.

Eulalia was the first to move.

Teresa filled the patio with plants.

And Don Ricardo, every morning, opened the front door with the same idea in his head:

that no one who had given their life for love deserved to end their days feeling like trash.

Sometimes, at night, Teresa would cry silently.

Not because of the desert.

We for the but.

But for the two children he had once embraced with fever, cared for in poverty, and loved without measure.

Those children no longer existed.

Or maybe so.

Perhaps they were still there, buried beneath the ambition, fear, and moral misery they chose.

But she stopped looking for them.

Because he understood something terrible and liberating at the same time:

There are children born from the body…

and others who are lost to the soul long before they disappear from the house.

And that afternoon in the desert, when they thought they were going to die alone, they had actually just discovered the truth that would save their lives.