Lupita grabbed a sharp piece of metal nearby and started cutting the rope.
Her hands shook. The rope was thick. Her fingers burned as she sawed through it.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
There was a pause.
“I think… someone wanted me gone,” Mateo said quietly.
Lupita nodded, not surprised. “That happens here.”
After several minutes, the rope finally snapped.
She pulled the fridge door open.
A wave of heat and stale air rushed out.
Mateo collapsed halfway out, gasping, his body weak and shaking.
Up close, he looked worse—bruised, exhausted, but alive.
He noticed her staring and slowly removed a silver watch from his wrist.
“Take it,” he said.
She didn’t move.
“For helping me.”
Lupita shook her head. “Someone would steal it. Or hurt me for it.”
Mateo looked at her for a long moment, then lowered his hand.
“Right,” he said softly.
That was when Rosa arrived, along with two men and a teenage boy pushing a cart.
“What in heaven’s name—” Rosa gasped.
They helped Mateo into a truck and rushed him to the clinic.
Lupita climbed into the back without asking.
She sat beside him the whole way, holding the cup of water.
At the clinic, everything changed.
Mateo made a single phone call.
“I’m alive,” he said.
Less than an hour later, black cars filled the yard.
Well-dressed people rushed inside.
A woman with silver hair—his aunt—embraced him like she had been holding her breath for days.
Only then did Lupita learn the truth.
Mateo Varela wasn’t just a man.
He was a millionaire.
