Chapter 7 - THE BACKYARD EXCAVATION AND THE HIDDEN FORTUNEThree days later, the house in Naucalpan looked like a crime scene out of a television documentary.
Yellow police tape crisscrossed the front porch. Forensics tents had been erected in the backyard, right over the overgrown grass near the old tool shed where Ofelia had kept Jimena locked up.
Neighbors stood behind the police barricades whispering, pointing smartphones, and recording every detail for local social media channels.
Inside the cordoned-off perimeter, forensic anthropologists worked with small trowels and brushes, carefully removing layers of damp, clay-heavy soil.
Andrés stood a few yards away, watching in silence. He wasn't alone. Jimena, discharged from the hospital against strict orders because she refused to be left alone while this unfolded, sat wrapped in a warm blanket in the passenger seat of their SUV, watching through the tinted window.
"Mr. Salgado?"
Andrés turned. The lead forensic investigator walked over, holding a heavy, rusted metal lockbox that had been unearthed just beneath the surface, mere inches from human skeletal remains.
"We found it," the investigator said gravely. "The remains match the timeline of twenty-five years ago. Dental records and DNA swabs will confirm identity within forty-eight hours. But this lockbox was buried directly beneath the remains, wrapped in heavy oilcloth."
Andrés took the heavy box. It was caked in dried mud. He carried it over to the tailgate of the SUV, popped the rusted latches with a flathead screwdriver, and lifted the lid.
Inside wasn't just old paper. It was a treasure trove of identity documents, photographs of a young, stunning woman with striking green eyes—eyes that Andrés suddenly realized matched his own reflection in the rearview mirror—and a stack of bearer bonds and property deeds worth millions of pesos.
At the bottom of the box was a golden locket enclosing a photograph and a handwritten diary entry dated October 2001.
Andrés opened the locket with trembling fingers. Inside was a portrait of a wealthy, prominent industrialist from Mexico City—a man whose face flashed across national television every week as the CEO of Corporativo Diamante, one of the largest manufacturing conglomerates in the country: Don Fernando Valdés.
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And written on the back of the photo in elegant ink were the words:
“Fernando, if anything happens to me, protect our son, Andrés. Don't let your family find him.”
