PART 1
—I’m not Mauricio… but if you’re really scared, I’ll go with you.
Daniel Herrera never imagined he would say those words at 2:07 in the morning, sitting on the sofa of his small apartment in Iztapalapa, still wearing his work boots, his hands stained with grease.
The phone had rung when the whole city seemed to be asleep.
Daniel was an industrial electrician and a single father to Valentina, a ten-year-old girl. His wife, Mariana, had died of cancer four years earlier. Since then, he had learned to wake up at any noise, any cough, any nighttime phone call.
But that night Valentina was sleeping at a friend’s house.
And the voice on the other end didn’t belong to anyone he knew.
—Mauricio… please. I’m at Hospital Ángeles. Room 608. I don’t want to be alone.
Daniel frowned.
—I think you dialed the wrong number.
There was silence.
Then he heard a sob.
—Mauricio?
—No. My name is Daniel.
The woman began to apologize, but her breathing was so ragged that Daniel felt a blow to his chest.
He recognized that fear.
It was the same fear he had felt sitting next to Mariana during her last nights.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m not Mauricio, but I can come. Just wait a little while.”
Twenty minutes later he was driving along Circuito Interior wondering if he had gone crazy.
When the hospital doors opened and the smell of disinfectant reached him, he almost turned back.
He hadn’t set foot in a hospital since his wife’s death.
But he remembered the phrase:
“I don’t want to be alone.”
He went up to the sixth floor.
The woman in room 608 appeared to be about thirty-two. She was pale, connected to several IV lines, with a scarf covering part of her hair.
—You’re not Mauricio.
—I already told you.
She let out a weak laugh.
—So officially I’m the most pathetic woman in Mexico. My name is Renata Salgado.
Daniel went still.
Salgado.
Salgado Technology Group.
One of the most important Mexican companies in satellite systems and telecommunications.
Renata was the only daughter of the late businessman Octavio Salgado.
“Mauricio was my boyfriend,” she explained. “He dumped me two weeks after I was diagnosed.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say.
Shortly afterward, Dr. Elena Méndez came in and asked to speak with him outside.
Renata suffered from severe aplastic anemia. Her bone marrow had practically stopped producing blood cells. The treatment was failing.
She needed a transplant.
And that night, an infection could kill her.
“She wants you to stay,” the doctor said.
Daniel went back inside.
“Why are you here?” Renata asked.
—Because I was once the one sitting alone in a hospital.
He didn’t explain further.
They talked for hours.
Daniel told her about Valentina, about her drawings of utility poles, about her obsession with fixing old things. Renata spoke of her father, of the 3,800 employees who now depended on her, and of a board of directors that was using her illness to question her abilities.
“Everyone disappears when you get sick,” she murmured. “Friends, partners… even family starts treating you like you’re already a memory.”
Daniel stayed until dawn.
Renata survived.
Before he left, he asked for her number.
Daniel thought that strange night was over.
Three days later, a black van parked in front of his small workshop.
A driver got out and handed him an envelope.
Inside was an invitation.
Renata wanted to see him urgently at her house in Lomas de Chapultepec.
The next day, sitting across from her in a huge room overlooking the city, Daniel heard a proposal so absurd he thought he’d misheard.
“I want to hire you for six months,” Renata said. “To pretend to be my partner.”
Daniel burst out laughing.
Renata did not smile.
—I’ll pay you twelve million pesos.
Daniel stopped laughing.
Renata explained that she didn’t need a boyfriend.
She needed to survive her own business family.
Because someone inside Grupo Salgado was preparing a coup to take everything from her while she struggled just to keep breathing.
