Chapter 12 - Letters from the Cell Block
The heavy oak desk in Mariana’s apartment held many things: mortgage papers, graphic design invoices, and Lucía’s watercolor paintings. On a rainy Tuesday evening, a plain white envelope caught her eye. It bore no return address, but the hurried, aggressive handwriting across the front was unmistakable.
Sergio.
Mariana stared at the paper for a long moment before sliding a letter opener beneath the flap. The pages inside were filled with cramped, jagged lines.
“You think you’ve won, Mariana? You and those pathetic old people think you can lock me away and pretend I never existed? The guys in here aren’t like Dad. They don’t buy the act. But they respect power. And when I get out—and I will get out on a technicality—the first place I’m coming is for you and that spoiled brat. Watch your back.”
There was no signature, just a dark, heavy period pressed so hard into the paper it had torn through to the other side.
Mariana didn’t panic. She didn’t feel the cold dread that once accompanied her brother’s threats. Instead, she opened the metal filing cabinet beneath her desk, placed Sergio’s letter into a clear plastic folder labeled Federal Appeal Violations, and took a clear photograph with her phone.
May you like
Within twenty minutes, the image was sitting in the inbox of the federal prosecutor handling Sergio’s case, accompanied by a formal request for a restraining order extension and a transfer to a maximum-security unit.
Threats only work when you are afraid of the dark. Mariana had spent years turning on the lights.
