Chapter 65: The Final Goodbye

MATEO – POV

Leonardo da Vinci Airport was overflowing with people, yet I walked through the crowd like a ghost. I had the ticket to Mexico City in my pocket, my return secured, the cathedral waiting for me. I pulled out my phone and sent a brief message to Father Ernesto, who was expecting me in San Cristóbal:

“Father, I must delay my trip by three days. An urgent family matter in Guadalajara requires my presence. I will depart after fulfilling it. Please keep everything ready for my arrival.”

I gave no further explanation. What could I say? That the past I had buried fifteen years ago had returned all at once to demand answers?

I changed the flight with steady hands. There was no turning back.

Rome–Mexico City. Mexico City–Guadalajara.

Guadalajara welcomed me with the same heavy air I remembered. It smelled of tequila, dry earth, jacarandas. The armored car they sent picked me up and carried me along roads lined with blue agave fields and the high walls of haciendas. With every curve, memories returned like knives: childhood, my father’s shouts, games interrupted by distant gunshots, sirens that never arrived in time.

The Salazar estate was unchanged. A colonial palace with terracotta-colored walls, wrought-iron gates, and windows like watchful eyes. A fortress disguised as heritage. I stepped out of the car with my purple cassock immaculate, the clerical collar perfectly in place. I knew they would look at me as a stranger.

At the entrance I was greeted by familiar yet forgotten faces: cousins, sisters-in-law, suited men with hard stares and suspicious bulges beneath their jackets. No one smiled. Some barely nodded. Others pierced me with their eyes, unsure what to do with a Salazar dressed as a monsignor.

The twins—Santiago and Sebastián—approached with grave expressions.

“Thank you for coming, brother,” Santiago said, his seriousness hiding a trace of relief.

“Don’t make it sound like a favor,” I replied coldly. “I came for Mom. Only for her.”

Sebastián nodded, respecting my distance.

“She’s waiting for you. Hurry.”

They led me to the main bedroom of the estate, where time seemed frozen in another century. The smell of medicine, incense, and wilted flowers struck me immediately.

There was my mother. Sixty-eight years heavy on her shoulders, gaunt, sunken face, skin marked by the harsh life she endured beside Rodrigo Salazar. But her eyes—those eyes that had always looked at me with unconditional love—lit up the moment she saw me.

“My Mateo…” she whispered, with a broken smile that cost her all her remaining strength.

My soul shattered into a thousand pieces. I rushed to her side and took her hands—bony, cold, still trembling with maternal tenderness.

“Mom, I came just like you asked.”

She caressed me with a strength she no longer had, kissed my hands as if I were a miracle fallen from heaven.

“I knew you would come, my little angel. I knew you wouldn’t let me die alone. Thank you… thank you for not abandoning me at the end.”

Tears burned my eyes, and this time I didn’t hold them back. I let them fall onto our joined hands.

“Forgive me, Mom. Forgive me for all these years. For not coming back when Dad died. For never visiting you even once. I was a coward.”

She shook her head weakly.

“No, my child. You saved yourself. You did the right thing by leaving. I always knew it. You never belonged to this world.” She paused to breathe. “I saw you on television, son. I saw you speaking to the people, comforting the poor. I saw them place that purple cassock on you. My heart filled with pride. At least one of my sons escaped the cursed destiny of his father.”

Her voice broke with every word.

“Pray for me, son. I’m so afraid of hell… I lived so many years beside a man who did so much harm…”

I leaned over her, cradling her forehead in my hands.

“You are not guilty of Dad’s sins, Mom. You were a victim too. God will forgive you because your heart was always good. I promise you.”

I prayed aloud. I recited entire psalms. I administered the last rites with trembling hands. Her sobs mixed with mine. Her breathing grew slower, more spaced.

“I love you, Mateo… my angel… my blessing…”

Her hands clutched mine with surprising strength. She looked at me one last time with those eyes full of love I never deserved. And then, with a final sigh that sounded like release, she was gone.

Silence filled the room like molten lead.

My mother was dead.

I stepped out with my face soaked in tears and mucus, not caring who saw me. My brothers waited in the colonial hallway.

“She’s gone,” I said, my voice shattered. “Mom died.”

The silence broke with a wave of restrained weeping that swept through the estate. Santiago punched the adobe wall until his knuckles bled. Sebastián dropped to his knees, covering his face. Some relatives cried openly. Others—hardened by the criminal life—only bowed their heads, jaws clenched.

The news spread through the hacienda like an icy wind of death.

The following hours were a blur. Preparations. Phone calls. Women’s sobs. My mother’s body was carefully arranged by my aunts, dressed in an embroidered white gown, a silver rosary placed between her hands. I insisted on officiating the funeral Mass—not as a Vatican monsignor, but as a son.

The private chapel of the estate filled to capacity. Faces hardened by crime—men with tattoos of saints and skulls—knelt before the open casket. I recited the psalms with a steady voice, though my heart shattered with every word.

I spoke of God’s forgiveness.

Of infinite mercy.

Of hope in eternal life.

I knew many listening believed not a single word. But my mother would have believed them—and that was my only strength.

The burial took place the next day. The procession walked to the family cemetery on the outskirts of Guadalajara, a pink-stone mausoleum where generations of Salazars slept beneath gold-lettered names.

The coffin was lowered beside my father’s. I stood there, cross in hand, staring at the name I had hated for years:

RODRIGO SALAZAR MENDOZA

1955–2011

I felt rage. I felt pain. I felt relief that he was dead.

I knelt on the dry earth and prayed aloud so all could hear:

“Mother, forgive me for not coming back sooner. For not being there when you needed me. I swear before God: from heaven you will watch over me, and I will carry your memory with me until my final breath.”

Then I looked at my father’s grave—the man who dragged us into the hell of narco violence. The man who put a gun in my hands at fifteen. The man who turned our home into a fortress and our blood into merchandise.

“Father… I hated you more than I should have. I blamed you for everything. Today I leave you here, buried in this soil, and I hold onto the hope that God, in His infinite mercy, has forgiven you as well—even if I still cannot.”

The wind blew hard through the agaves, like a sigh from the land of Jalisco. I closed my eyes, tears falling freely onto my cassock.

Back at the estate, the faces remained hard and wary. My cousins looked at me as the traitor who had abandoned the surname. My brothers’ wives whispered among themselves. I was the outsider—the one who had renounced the family, who didn’t belong to that world of blood and bullets.

I no longer cared. I had come to say goodbye to my mother—and I had done so. I had fulfilled my duty as a son.

My brothers found me in the courtyard at dusk.

“Thank you for staying, Mateo,” Santiago said hoarsely. “She died in peace because of you.”

“She needed you, not us,” Sebastián added. “You were always her favorite. Her little angel.”

I only nodded, unable to speak without breaking.

“I leave tomorrow. I must return to San Cristóbal. That is my life now. My only path.”

They didn’t insist. They simply embraced me tightly—three brothers united for a moment amid so much pain. And for the first time in fifteen years, I felt that despite everything—crime, distance, opposing choices—we were still brothers.

That night, before sleeping in my old room, I stared at the locket they had given me. The photo of Mom smiling, my childhood arms around her neck, in more innocent times.

I whispered a long prayer for her soul.

I closed my eyes knowing that tomorrow I would return to Mexico.

To San Cristóbal.

To my faith.

To my desire for Lucía.

To my eternal condemnation.

But at least, for the first time in years, I could do so without the weight of having abandoned my mother.