There was even a blurry aerial image: a gray square surrounded by forest, and in the middle, something long and curved—like half a metal cylinder. An old semicircular hangar.
Scrap metal in the middle of nowhere.
My first instinct was to throw the paper away and look for work. I needed a plan. A room. Something. I needed to save up to fight for Mariana. The system doesn’t hand you your siblings out of pity. And Mariana had the same clock ticking: six years and a black bag.
But the paper wouldn’t leave my mind.
One hundred pesos.
A place to go.
A dot on the map that, even if ugly, was mine.
At the ticket window, I saw two destinations: one to Mexico City—promising shelters and anonymity. The other to the notary’s town.
That was the first real decision of my life.
I bought the ticket to the mountains.
On the bus, the mountains rose like the world was closing in around me. I called Mariana from a borrowed phone at a roadside shop—yes, I broke the thirty-day rule, because some promises don’t care about regulations.
“Leo?” Her voice was small, trembling. “Where are you?”
“I’m going somewhere, May. It’s… Grandpa’s inheritance.”
“A house?”
“Not yet. But… land. And a warehouse. I’m going to fix it. I’m going to make a home. And then I’m coming back for you. I promise.”
There was a long silence.
“Does it have a roof?”
I laughed with a lump in my throat.
“Yeah. It’s… almost all roof.”
“Then that’s something,” she whispered. “Take care, Leo.”
“You too. I love you.”
I hung up and stared at my reflection in the bus window: a kid with dark circles, carrying a black bag. An adult by decree. A child inside.
The notary’s office smelled of old wood and yellowed papers. Anselmo Figueroa was an older man with thick glasses, like he belonged to another era.
I placed the hundred-peso bill on his desk, half in disbelief.
“Sign here and here,” he said flatly.
I signed with a shaky handwriting that looked like middle school.
He leaned back and looked at me.
“Your grandfather bought that land thirty years ago. No electricity. No water. No road. The hangar… it’s pitiful. If you want advice from one adult to another: sell it. Someone already asked about it.”
He slid another paper across the desk. An offer from a company called Sierra Azul Developments: 150,000 pesos for the parcel “as is.”
My heart jumped. That money could pay rent, food, a lawyer…
It was the easy yes.
The logical yes.