Mateo Navarro kept the diary on his lap like a relic too fragile to trust. The leather was cracked at the spine, the corners softened by years of Jacinta’s touch. He had found the book boxed among linens after her funeral, buried with other keepsakes no one had dared disturb. It had gathered dust on his shelf for long, hidden like an inconvenient truth.

Tonight, he had pulled it out. Not to discover what he already knew—Teofisto’s papers had revealed the truth two years ago—but to seek ...