Chapter 74 CHAPTER 75

Chapter 74 CHAPTER 75

Julieta testified three months later.
Andrés had survived the burns long enough to make it to trial. They brought him into the courtroom in a wheelchair, a medical aide beside him, his hands wrapped in bandages, his face covered in white graft dressings protecting newly formed tissue. The entire right side of his face was disfigured. The left side still worked. His eyes, especially, still worked.
The courtroom was full.
Press in the back.
Relatives of Manuel Carvajal’s old victims filled the first rows—people who had waited years for this trial and who had been handed the closest thing to a substitute justice they were ever going to get.
Vladimir sat on the plaintiffs’ side, cane beside him, still not fully steady on his legs. Ana sat next to him. Ernesto behind them. Mario, limping, in the last row.
When they called Julieta Carrasco to the witness stand, she rose.
She wore a simple black dress with long sleeves.
Long sleeves had become part of her—not to hide anything anymore, but out of habit.
She crossed to the stand in low heels, climbed the two steps, swore the oath they asked of her, and sat down.
The prosecutor began with technical questions.
Name.
Age.
Relationship to Andrés Guzmán.
Julieta answered everything clearly, without trembling, without raising her voice.
She identified the defendant.
She described the kidnapping from seven years earlier at the hands of Manuel Carvajal and the trafficking network in which Andrés Guzmán had been a partner.
She spoke about the envelope that had arrived at Casa Verde with the old photographs.
She spoke about the attack on Vladimir’s Mercedes.
The courtroom was completely silent when the prosecutor finished.
Then it was the defense attorney’s turn.
He was a man in his fifties, impeccably dressed, carrying the expression expensive defense lawyers often had—the look of someone who knew his job was not to win, but to soften.
He approached the witness stand calmly.
“Miss Carrasco. First of all, allow me to thank you for appearing today.”
“I didn’t come for you. I came for myself.”
A restrained ripple of laughter moved through the courtroom.
The judge looked up but said nothing.
“Miss Carrasco, a simple question. The accusations you have made today against my client—do you possess physical evidence supporting them?”
“The physical evidence is in the prosecution’s hands. What I have is my body and my memory.”
“The envelope of photographs arrived at the center where your mother was staying. Did you personally see the envelope?”
“I did. My sister opened it in front of me. I read every page.”
“Do you have proof that my client sent it?”
“The prosecution does. And my client has it in the mirror.”
The attorney blinked.
Just once.
“Miss Carrasco, I’m not sure I understand that last remark.”
“My client. I said my client. I meant your client. Sorry. It’s my first time in a courtroom like this, and I’m still learning the vocabulary.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“Thank you.”

The attorney continued.
He asked his questions with the calm of a man who knew he was losing and hoped only to leave a little doubt behind.
Could her previous trauma be affecting her perception?
Had she received psychiatric treatment?
Could the medication she had taken after the kidnapping at the estate have distorted her memory?
Julieta answered everything.
Without drama.
Without raising her voice.
Yes, I attended therapy. That doesn’t make me unstable. It makes me responsible.
Yes, I took medication for a period. That was two and a half years ago and has no effect on anything I’m describing today.
Yes, I have been kidnapped twice in my life, which is not statistically convenient, but both events happened, both are documented, and the first involved the very man your client still represents.
The attorney thanked her.
Then he sat down.
The judge asked whether she wished to add anything.
There was a pause.
Julieta looked at the judge.
Then at the prosecutor.
Then she turned slowly in the witness chair and, for the first time in the courtroom, looked directly at Andrés Guzmán.
Andrés held her gaze.
Half his face was covered. The other half still worked.
He met her eyes with the one healthy eye he had left.
Julieta did not blink.
“Yes. I’d like to add something, if Your Honor permits.”
“Permitted. Be brief.”
“I will.”
She adjusted herself in the chair.
Rested both hands on her knees.
And spoke while looking at Andrés.
“Seven years ago, in a basement operated by your partner Manuel but visited frequently by you, I was nineteen years old and convinced my life was over. I thought I was going to die there. I thought the only body I would ever know again would be that broken one. I’m saying it plainly because that’s exactly what I thought.”
Andrés did not blink.
“And then I didn’t die. I’m still not entirely sure how. But I got out, and I built something. I didn’t build it cleanly. I built it with fear. For years my mind was split in two—one half living a new life, the other half still waiting for you. Waiting for you to come back. Waiting for an envelope to arrive. Waiting to be kidnapped again.”
A finger moved beneath the bandages on Andrés’s hand.
Barely.
“And then you did come back. Nine months ago. In the form of an envelope. In the form of photographs. In the form of an attack against the man I love. You did exactly what the broken part of me had spent seven years expecting you to do.”
She paused.
“And I thank you for it.”
The courtroom stirred.
“I truly do. I’m not being ironic. I thank you because by doing it, you saved me twenty more years of waiting. You forced me to live this story now instead of later.”
The defense attorney shifted in his chair.
The judge did not let him interrupt.
“Andrés, I’m going to tell you something that surprises me more than it surprises you.”
Her voice remained calm.
“I forgave you.”
A woman in the front row let out a small sound.
“I didn’t forgive you because you deserve it. I didn’t forgive you for your sake. I forgave you because carrying you one more day meant giving you one more day. And I already gave you seven years. I gave you my twentieth year, my twenty-first, my twenty-second. I gave you entire nights I no longer remember. I gave you a whole year of my sexual life that I had to learn again from the beginning. I gave you a baby I lost in your partner’s basement and whose name I never knew. I gave you my trust in the world—in hallways, in men, in doors. I gave you many things, Andrés. And I’m not giving you anything else.”
Andrés took a deep breath.
His chest rose and fell beneath the hospital shirt.
“I’m not forgiving you to free you. I’m forgiving you to free myself. You’re going to leave this courtroom in a wheelchair and enter a prison where you’ll remain for however many years the judge decides. And you’ll live there with the face your own fire left you. And that, Andrés—that is no longer my concern.”
Her gaze never left him.
“My concern ends here. In this witness chair. Today.”
She paused.
Looked directly into his remaining good eye.
Then spoke more softly, though the entire courtroom heard her.
“One more thing. Something I haven’t told anyone yet. I have a son. He’s three months old. He’s at the Rossi mansion with his father, who is alive, walking, awake.”
Andrés closed his healthy eye.
Julieta did not.
“My son will never know you existed. That is the gift I’m giving myself today. That my son grows up without your name in anyone’s mouth. Without your photographs hidden away. Without your shadow in the hallways.”
Her voice remained steady.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I can think of doing with everything you owe me—and everything you’ll never repay.”
Andrés kept his eye closed.
Julieta didn’t.
“Thank you, Your Honor. That’s all I wanted to add.”

She stepped down from the witness stand.
Her knees held.
She didn’t shake while descending the steps.
She crossed the courtroom slowly, without looking at anyone, until she reached the bench where Vladimir was waiting.
He held out his hand.
Julieta sat beside him.
Took it.
Squeezed.
“You did well, Mami Julieta.”
“You talked to Gabriela.”
“I talk to her every day. She taught me that one two weeks ago.”
“Vladimir.”
“Yes?”
“Did my voice shake?”
“No. Not once. You signed something up there.”
“Well. That’s what I wanted.”
“How do you feel?”
“Light.”
“Good.”
He squeezed her hand again.
Andrés Guzmán was taken from the courtroom half an hour later, sentenced to a number of years Julieta no longer cared to count.
The room emptied gradually.
Ana came over and touched her shoulder.
Mario nodded to her from the last row.
Ernesto patted Vladimir on the back as he passed.
When they stepped outside, the sun was shining.
Julieta closed her eyes for a moment.
Let it warm her face.
Breathed.
“Let’s go home,” Vladimir said.
“Let’s go.”
And they left.
Slowly.
Hand in hand.
Leaving behind a courtroom.
A name that no longer belonged to her.
And the last closed door of a story she had decided, that morning, to stop carrying.