PART 1
Chapter 1: The Noise in the Basement
Fausto Beltrán, known in the underworld as “The Lion,” heard the sound before opening the heavy mahogany door to the basement of his mansion in Jardines del Pedregal. Crack. Crack. Crack.
It wasn’t a sound that belonged to the purchased tranquility of his home. It wasn’t the clinking of Baccarat crystal, nor the distant echo of Mexico City sirens, nor anything he recognized from his world of criminal logistics and organized violence. It was wood against wood. Dry. Rhythmic. A strange, tribal heartbeat.
He descended the marble steps with silent steps, a legacy of his years in the mountains. He was still wearing his wool coat, the knot of his tie tightening around his neck like a silk rope. He had returned early from a meeting in Santa Fe, with that unease in his chest that had so often saved his life. Something wasn’t right. His instinct, that beast that lived in his gut, had whispered to him: “Go home.”
He stopped at the half-open basement door and peered through the crack. The scene that unfolded before his eyes defied all logic.
Valentina stood barefoot on the cold floor in the center of the room. She was twelve years old, her straight black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, her neck beaded with sweat. Her cloudy eyes, naturally white, stared into a blank space. And yet, her body was on high alert, as if she could see every inch of the room with her skin.
Facing her, circling like a patient predator, was Isolda, the housekeeper who had been working at the mansion for eight months. She was a woman with strong features, from Oaxaca, silent as a shadow. She also had a wooden stick—a broom handle cut off—and she tapped it rhythmically against her own palm, marking an irregular beat.
“Again,” the woman said, her voice unrecognizable. It wasn’t the voice of the maid asking if she wanted coffee. It was a commanding voice, cold and professional. “Attack!”
Isolda’s stick sliced through the air with a sharp whistle. Valentina didn’t move away. She didn’t cover her head in fear, as Fausto might have expected. She stepped toward the sound, raised her own stick diagonally, and blocked the blow with a timing that made Fausto’s heart stop for a second.
Crack! The crash echoed off the volcanic stone walls.
“Good,” Isolda said. “But you hesitated, my child. Hesitation is death. Listen to the air, Valentina. A blow announces itself before it touches you. The wind changes.” “I’m trying…” the girl gasped, her chest rising and falling. “Don’t try. Do it. Or I’ll break your ribs.”
Three quick knocks: high, low, high. Valentina blocked the first two with astonishing fluidity, but the third caught her hip. She doubled over, gasped for breath with a hiss of pain, but didn’t cry. Fausto felt a mixture of admiration and blind fury. He pushed open the door violently.
The sound of Valentina’s stick hitting the ground was abrupt, almost obscene in the sudden silence. “What the hell is this?” Her voice came out low, restrained, with that guttural tone that preceded death sentences in the cartel.
Valentina smiled when she heard him, an automatic smile of relief that turned into a grimace. “Dad, you’re early…” The smile vanished when she heard the sound of her name coming from her father’s mouth: harsh, dangerous.
Isolda took a step, positioning herself just slightly in front of the girl. It was a minimal, almost suicidal gesture. Fausto noticed it, and it enraged him even more. “I asked you a question,” he muttered, fixing his dark eyes on the maid. “What the hell are you doing with my daughter?”
“Teaching her,” she replied without blinking. Not a tremor in her voice. “Teaching her what? To get killed? She’s blind, damn it! She can barely go down the stairs without holding onto the banister.” “That’s not true,” Valentina’s voice broke, filled with a wounded dignity Fausto had never known. “I can do more than you think, Dad. I’m not a baby anymore!”
“Go up to your room, Valentina,” he ordered, pointing to the stairs even though she couldn’t see him. “No, listen to me…” “I said go up!”
The order sliced through the air like a machete blow. Valentina clenched her jaw, let her shoulders slump, and started climbing the stairs. Fausto watched her with a mixture of anger and fear… and he couldn’t ignore the detail: she climbed quickly, her knuckles brushing the wall, without stumbling even once.
Only when the echo of her footsteps faded upstairs did Fausto turn to Isolda. “You’re fired. I want you out of my house in ten minutes.” “No, I’m not.” Her insolence left him speechless for a second. The man feared by governors and police alike was paralyzed by the audacity of a domestic servant. “Excuse me, what did you say?”
“You’re not going to fire me,” she repeated calmly. “Because you know I’m right, Don Fausto. You’ve surrounded Valentina with guards, walls, and armored trucks, but you haven’t protected her. You’ve left her defenseless. And in your world, Mr. Beltrán, the defenseless end up in a body bag.”
Fausto covered the distance in three strides. He grabbed her arm, not with lethal force, but with enough to intimidate anyone. “You know nothing about my world,” he murmured close to her face. “I know enough.” Her dark eyes gleamed with an ancient coldness, a gleam Fausto had seen in the eyes of old-school hitmen. “You have a weak point. Everyone knows what it is. Everyone knows your daughter is isolated in this gilded cage, unable to see danger coming. How long do you think it will take for someone to decide she’s the easiest way to break you?”
“I have security. I pay a fortune.” “Security can be bought. And what can be bought can be bribed, killed, or disappeared with a bigger bill. But a daughter who knows how to defend herself, who can ‘see’ with her ears… that’s something you can’t take away from her.”
He wanted to scream at her, hit her, kick her out. He couldn’t. The truth had already been told and hung in the damp air of the basement. “Go,” he finally said, letting her go. “We’ll talk tomorrow. And be grateful I’m not taking you out in the trunk of a car.”
Isolda nodded once, straightened her apron, and as she passed him, murmured, “Your daughter is stronger than you think, master. The question is whether you’re brave enough to let her prove it.”
When he was alone, Fausto discovered that his hands were trembling. Not from rage. From fear. A pure, icy fear he hadn’t felt since he was a “hawk” on the streets of Sinaloa.
Chapter 2: The She-Wolf of Tepito
That night, the reposado tequila wasn’t enough to quell his unease. Fausto paced his office like a caged animal. The conversation with “El Chino,” his right-hand man and head of security, only fueled the fire in his head.
Valentina wasn’t just his daughter; she was his heir. His Achilles’ heel. Her name was an obsessive whisper in the capital’s criminal circles. Everyone knew that the quickest way to bring down Boss Beltrán was to touch the blind girl.
“You can’t protect her every second, Fausto,” El Chino told him over the phone, with that brutal calm that characterized him. “You can double the security, triple it. There will always be a gap. A traitor. Either you prepare her… or you leave her at the mercy of the wolves.”
The words lingered in Fausto’s mind all night. At dawn, he made a decision: before running after the maid, he was going to find out who the hell she really was. Nobody learns to fight like that cleaning floors.
The address his intelligence team provided led him to a place Fausto hadn’t set foot in for years. It wasn’t Polanco, nor Las Lomas. It was the rough heart of the city: Tepito. The Barrio Bravo.
The boxing gym was in the basement of an old tenement, amidst pirated goods stalls and the smell of street food. There was no sign, just a faded metal door. Fausto went in with two of his men, but told them to stay in the doorway. He had to do this alone.
Inside, the smell of stale sweat, liniment, and old blood hit him like an unpleasant childhood memory. The old man behind the counter, a fellow with a flat nose and cauliflower ears, recognized him instantly. Fear flashed across his face, but he stood his ground. “I’m not here to collect protection money,” Fausto said, sitting down uninvited on a wooden bench. “I’m here about a woman. She calls herself Isolda now. Dark hair, short, strong. She works at my house.”
The old man stared at him for a long time, chewing on a toothpick, until he sighed like someone reopening an old wound. “You really don’t recognize her, do you, Don Fausto?”
He dragged his feet to his feet, went to a wall covered with black and white photos, yellowed by tobacco smoke, and pointed to one framed with tape.
The young woman in the photograph was in an underground ring, surrounded by screaming people. Her head was shaved on the sides, her wiry body covered in scars, blood trickling from her nose, and she wore a wild, almost demonic smile. One hand was raised in victory, the other pointing to the sky. Her features were different, younger, less weary. But her eyes… Her eyes were the same dark wells that had challenged him in his basement.
“The She-Wolf,” the old man said reverently. “The She-Wolf of Tepito. Undefeated in forty-seven street fights. She earned more money in two years than all of us in a lifetime. She sometimes fought blindfolded, just to mock the men. And she disappeared after the Butchers’ Tournament. The night her brother was killed.”
Each sentence was a punch to the gut for Fausto. The old man told the story while wiping a glass with a dirty rag: Isolda had started fighting at sixteen to support her younger brother, Luca, a bright boy who dreamed of becoming an architect. When Luca’s kidneys failed, Isolda made a deal with a criminal syndicate downtown: a brutal underground championship in exchange for the money for the transplant.
Five fights. Anything goes. No rules. If I won, I would save Luca’s life.
She won four without a scratch. She was a killing machine. In the final, before stepping into the makeshift ring in a warehouse in the Doctores neighborhood, they told her the real price: if she lost, Luca would live; if she won, he would be used as a “message,” thrown to the dogs. They wanted her to throw the fight. Isolda tried to lose. She really tried. But when her opponent tried to break her arm, her body reacted on instinct. The survival instinct that can’t be turned off. She knocked him out in ninety seconds… and while they proclaimed her champion amidst boos from the gamblers, elsewhere in the city, a fourteen-year-old boy was paying the price for his victory.
“The arena, the tournament, the betting…” The old man fixed his gaze on Fausto, trembling but brave. “All of that was financed by your people, Don Fausto. Or at least, by the associates you were with back then. The money from that championship passed through your organization’s hands.”
Fausto felt nauseous. The air in the gym became unbreathable. He left with a corrosive certainty, walking among the stalls selling micheladas and counterfeit clothing without seeing anything: that silent maid had entered his house knowing exactly who he was. She knew where part of his fortune came from.
And yet, downstairs in his basement, he was teaching his blind daughter to fight. Why? Revenge? Or something more sinister?
She didn’t speak of it to anyone. She returned to the mansion as the sun set over the polluted city, staining the sky a violent red.
That afternoon, she found Valentina again in the back garden. Isolda had hung wind chimes at different heights and scattered broken glass along a path. “If you step wrong, you’ll cut yourself,” Isolda told her. “If you move quickly without touching the chimes, you’ll live.”
Fausto watched from the balcony, hidden behind the curtains. Something inside him broke and mended itself at the same time. He saw his daughter fail. He saw her cut her foot, a red line of blood staining the manicured lawn. He saw her bite her lip to stifle a scream. But then, he saw her stop. Close her eyes (even more than they already were). Click her tongue. Click. The sound echoed off the bells. Echolocation. Valentina moved forward. One step. Two. She dodged a bell. She leaped across the glass with a grace that had nothing to do with sight and everything to do with the soul.
“Did you see it, Isolde?” the girl shouted as she reached the end, dirty and bleeding, but smiling like never before in her life. “I can ‘see’ the sound!”
And for the first time, Fausto Beltrán, “The Lion”, understood that the world he saw was not the same world his daughter inhabited… and that her fears were chaining her more than any enemy.
He went down to the garden. Isolda tensed when she saw him. She expected to be fired. Or shot. Fausto looked at his daughter, who was breathing heavily and happily. Then he looked at the woman who had lost everything because of people like him. “Dry that foot of hers,” Fausto said hoarsely. “And tomorrow… I want you to teach her how to use a knife.”
Isolda nodded, slowly and solemnly. Fausto had accepted the training. But in doing so, he had unwittingly moved a piece on the chessboard of the entire city. Rumors fly in Mexico. And a rumor about the Capo’s daughter training for war could only mean one thing:
The war was already on its way.
PART 2
Chapter 3: The Whisper of Knives
In Mexico City, secrets don’t exist; there are only truths that people are afraid to say out loud.
In the cantinas of the Historic Center, amidst the cigarette smoke and the smell of cheap mezcal, and in the VIP private rooms of the nightclubs in Polanco, the rumor began to spread like wildfire: Fausto Beltrán’s daughter was no longer the glass girl.
They said that “The Lion” had brought a demon from the past to train her. “Remember the She-Wolf of Tepito?” the old hitmen whispered as they cleaned their weapons. “They say she’s in the mansion in Pedregal. They say the blind girl now walks without a cane and can hear you cocking a gun from two rooms away.”
For Fausto’s enemies, this wasn’t just a curious piece of gossip. It was a warning sign. A mafia boss who revives a street-fighting legend to train his only heir isn’t doing it for sport. He’s preparing for war.
As the city talked, Valentina’s training stopped being a game in the basement and moved into the real world.
Isolda showed no mercy. One Tuesday morning, she took Valentina out of the mansion’s security. No bodyguards. No armored vehicles. Just the two of them in an old taxi heading to the Jamaica Market.
“This is madness,” Valentina whispered, clinging to Isolda’s arm. The noise of the market was a solid wall: vendors shouting, car horns blaring, banda music at full volume, the pungent smell of flowers and dried chili peppers. For a blind girl used to the silence of air conditioning, it was hell. “The world won’t shut up so you can fight, honey,” Isolda said in her ear, as hard as cement. “Learn to filter. Your enemy has a sound. The rest is just noise. Find it.”
They walked through the narrow hallways. Isolda let go of her. Valentina panicked for a second. People were pushing her. She felt elbows, shopping bags, the heat of bodies. “Isolda!” she shouted. No one answered.
Then he felt something different. It wasn’t a sound, it was an intention. A ragged breath too close to his bag. A light step that didn’t match the pace of the porters. The pickpocket’s hand was quick, expert. It was going straight for his pocket.
Valentina didn’t think. Her body, programmed by months of repetition and pain, reacted. Her left hand intercepted the thief’s wrist before it touched the fabric. She twisted her hip, used the man’s momentum, and applied leverage to his thumb, forcing him to his knees with a squeal.
The market stopped around them. Valentina was trembling, pale, but she was holding the man down against a rose stall. “Let him go,” said Isolda’s voice, appearing out of nowhere beside her. “He’s learned his lesson.”
They walked home in silence. Valentina didn’t say anything until they were safely within the stone walls. “I knew where he was,” she murmured, touching her still-trembling hands. “I felt him before he touched me. Like… like the air itself warned me.” Isolda smiled for the first time in weeks. “That’s instinct, Valentina. Eyes lie. Fear lies. The air never lies.”
But the triumph was short-lived. The “invitation” arrived eight days later. It wasn’t an email, nor an encrypted WhatsApp message. It was a man. He arrived at the mansion’s front door. Impeccable Italian suit, politician’s smile, and shark-like eyes. He claimed to be an emissary of “El Cardenal,” the drug lord who controlled the Pacific corridor and had coveted the capital’s territory for years.
Fausto greeted him in the library, a pistol taped to the bottom of the mahogany table. “The Cardinal has heard some interesting things about your family,” the man said, accepting a tequila but not drinking it. “He says you’re arming the girl. That it breaks the truce.” “What I do in my own house is my business,” Fausto grumbled.
“Not anymore. The ‘Bosses’ Roundtable’ has been convened. They want to resolve the territorial disputes once and for all. In a… civilized manner. A tournament.” Fausto let out a dry laugh. “A tournament? Do they think we’re in a narco movie? We kill each other in the streets here.”
“Too much blood attracts the attention of the government and the gringos,” the emissary shrugged. “Old rules for modern times. One champion per family. Whoever wins gets the airport routes.” He paused dramatically and looked up at the ceiling, as if he could see Valentina in her room. “But the Cardinal suggests that if his daughter is as dangerous as they say… perhaps she should represent him.”
Fausto pulled out his pistol and slammed it on the table. “If anyone touches my daughter… there won’t be anyone left they can call family. I’m going to burn the whole damn country down.”
The man didn’t even blink. He placed a black envelope on the table. “This isn’t a suggestion, Don Fausto. It’s a choice. Either you send your champion to the tournament in eight days… or we bomb your house with everyone inside. You decide: risk one in the arena, or sacrifice them all in the war.”
The emissary stood, buttoned his jacket, and left without turning his back. Fausto stared at the black envelope. He knew it was a trap. An ambush disguised as an honor. But when the emissary mentioned Valentina, fear gripped him. The Cardinal knew. He knew Fausto would never send her. He knew Fausto would go himself, or send his best men, leaving the house vulnerable.
It was a masterstroke of chess. What the Cardinal didn’t know was that a frightened little girl no longer lived in that house. A she-wolf in training lived there.
Chapter 4: The Perfect Storm
Eight days. That was the deadline set by the clock of death.
In those eight days, the Beltrán mansion ceased to be a home and became a military barracks. The windows were covered, guards patrolled around the clock with long guns, and the air smelled of gunpowder and strong coffee.
But the real battle was happening on the rooftop.
It was the rainy season in Mexico City. The sky fell apart every afternoon, turning the city into a gray lagoon. Fausto tried to stop it. He wanted to take Valentina to the safe house in the mountains of Durango. To hide her. To bury her under three layers of concrete and oblivion.
The argument erupted in the main hall as lightning illuminated the stained-glass windows. “We’re leaving tonight!” Fausto shouted, throwing a suitcase to the floor. “It’s decided!” “I’m not going!” Valentina stood before him. She no longer lowered her head. Her white eyes were fixed on the spot where she knew her father was.
“You don’t understand anything!” he roared, desperate, grabbing her by the shoulders. “This is a trap! They want to kill us. You’re my weakness, Valentina. If they have you, they have me. That’s why I’m hiding you!”
There was a terrible silence. Only the rain hitting the windows could be heard. Valentina pulled away from his grip with a smooth but firm movement. “I’m tired, Dad,” she said, her voice sounding much older than her twelve years. “I’m tired of being the perfect excuse for everyone to threaten you. Tired of you treating me like I’m made of glass.”
She took a step toward him. “I’m not your weakness because I’m blind. I’m your weakness because you insist I am. Your sins have already caught up with me, Dad. I was born into this shitty world. You can’t change that with money or trips to the mountains. But you can decide something: are you going to hide me until they find me and kill me, trembling with fear? Or are you going to let me survive?”
Fausto felt like he couldn’t breathe. His daughter’s words hurt more than any bullet he’d ever been hit by. She was forcing him to say aloud what he’d kept silent for years: his guilt. Guilt over the tainted money, over the blood that had paid for the luxuries of this house.
“Let me be strong,” she whispered. “Trust me, Dad. For once, just trust me.”
Behind them, leaning against the doorframe, Isolda watched. Her arms were crossed, her expression unreadable. Fausto looked at the maid, the former champion, the victim of her own system. “Do you think she’s ready?” Fausto asked, his voice breaking.
Isolda looked at the girl. “No,” she said with brutal honesty. “No one is ready for what’s coming. But she has something you’ve already lost, boss: hunger.”
That night, during the worst storm of the year, they climbed onto the roof. There was no roof. The water lashed down like icy whips. The tile floor was slippery as soap. The thunder was deafening; it drowned out every subtle sound, every footstep, every breath.
“If you can fight here,” Isolda shouted, soaked to the bone, her hair plastered to her skull, a fighting stick in her hand, “you can fight in any hell.”
Valentina was in the center, shivering with cold, disoriented. The water blurred her senses. The sound of the rain hitting the ground created a white static in her mind. She couldn’t hear where Isolda was.
“I’m blind!” Valentina cried, panicking. “I can’t hear a thing here!” “Then don’t listen!” replied Isolda’s voice, which seemed to come from everywhere. “Feel it! The water changes when someone moves! The vibration in the floor changes!”
Isolda attacked. Valentina took the blow to the shoulder and fell to the wet ground, swallowing water. “Get up!” Isolda roared. Another blow. Valentina rolled, scraping her knees. She was crying, but her tears mingled with the rain.
Fausto watched from the stairwell, soaked to the bone, his heart in his throat. He wanted to run, stop him, hug his little girl. But he forced himself to stay still. He knew that if he intervened now, he would condemn her to death.
Valentina stood up, slipping. She closed her mouth. She stopped trying to listen with her ears and started listening with her feet. She felt a slight vibration in the tile. A splashing sound that wasn’t rain.
Isolda launched herself from the left. Valentina didn’t hear her. She felt her. She felt the displacement of air and water. She ducked just in time. Isolda’s stick whizzed past her head. Valentina swept her teacher’s leg. Isolda, surprised by the pull, lost her balance and fell heavily into a puddle.
Before she could stand, the tip of Valentina’s stick was at her throat. The girl was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling, water trickling down her defiant face. “I found you,” Valentina said.
Isolda lay on the ground for a moment, gazing at the dark, stormy sky. Then she began to laugh. A husky, liberating laugh. She stood up and, instead of straightening her posture, she hugged the girl. A tight hug, warrior to warrior.
“You’re ready,” he whispered in her ear.
Later, dry and in warm clothes, they ate dinner in the kitchen. The atmosphere had changed. They were no longer master, daughter, and maid. They were a unit. An unusual team forged in tension.
Isolda looked at Fausto as he sat over his coffee cup. “Ten years ago, a child died in a boxing ring because of people like you,” she said. There was no hatred in her voice, only profound sadness. “I came to this house determined to hate you. To find a way to repay you for the harm you caused.”
Fausto lowered his gaze, ashamed. “But I met Valentina,” Isolda continued, placing her calloused hand on the girl’s delicate hand. “And I saw my brother. I saw a child who never had a chance, resurrected in her. I can’t forgive what happened, Don Fausto. I’ll never forgive it. But I can choose whom I protect now.”
She stood up and went to the window, gazing at the dark night sky over Mexico City. “Tomorrow we’re going to that tournament. And I swear on Luca’s memory… no one will touch this girl while I’m still alive.”
Fausto nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and it was the first time in his life that those words had left his mouth without expecting anything in return.
The next day, the black SUVs lined up at the entrance. Valentina came out dressed not in sportswear, but in a simple, tailored black suit that allowed her to move freely. Her hair was braided tightly, like the boxers from Tepito. She wasn’t wearing sunglasses. She wanted them to see her eyes. She wanted them to see that she wasn’t afraid.
Fausto opened the armored car door for her. “Ready, honey?” She nodded, feeling the knife hidden in her boot. “Okay, Dad. Let’s go.”
The caravan set off for the rendezvous point: an old, abandoned trail in the Vallejo industrial zone. They were heading into the lion’s den. But the wolf didn’t know that the prey it awaited… had fangs of its own.
Chapter 5: The Trail of Betrayal
The venue chosen for the “tournament” was a cruel mockery of the city’s history: the old Ferrería Slaughterhouse in the Vallejo industrial zone. A labyrinth of concrete, rusted hooks, and drains that still smelled of cow and pig blood, even though it had been closed for years.
Fausto Beltrán’s caravan entered, kicking up dust and trash. The Mexico City sky remained gray and heavy, like a lead slab about to fall on them. “This smells like death,” Isolda murmured from the back seat. She wasn’t talking about the smell of a slaughterhouse. She was talking about that static electricity that makes your skin crawl before a shootout.
Valentina was in the middle, her hands on her knees. She wasn’t trembling. She was listening. The Suburban’s engine, the squeal of the tires on the gravel, and something else… a distant hum. “There are a lot of people,” the girl said softly. “Too many for a one-on-one duel.”
Fausto gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “Chino,” he spoke into the radio, “eyes open. If you see a shadow you don’t like, drop the bullet.” “Copy that, boss.”
They got out of the vehicle. The scene was theatrical, almost ludicrous. In the center of the main hall, where cattle had once been butchered, a concrete circle had been cleared. Industrial spotlights illuminated the center with a sickly yellow light. Around it, on the rusted metal walkways that encircled the ground floor, silhouettes could be seen.
Men. Many of them. They weren’t neutral bystanders. They were hitmen for the Pacific Cartel. You could tell by their rigid posture, their hands near their waists, their stares that weren’t looking for entertainment, but for targets.
In the makeshift “box” (a supervisor’s office with broken windows on the second floor), the emissary in the expensive suit sat smoking a cigar. Beside him, a man who must have been the rival champion: a tattooed mountain of muscle, with the vacant stare of someone who’d taken too much methamphetamine to feel pain.
Fausto walked toward the center with Valentina to his right and Isolda to his left. His men, led by El Chino, fanned out behind him, their short rifles tucked close to their bodies under their trench coats.
“Welcome to the slaughterhouse,” the emissary’s voice boomed through a megaphone. “The rules are simple. No firearms in the circle. The one left standing wins. The one who stops breathing loses.”
Fausto looked up. His “Lion” eyes scanned the catwalks. “It’s a trap,” he whispered to Isolda without moving his lips. “As soon as the fight starts, they’re going to riddle us with bullets from above. They brought us here to execute us all.” “I know,” she replied, tensing her muscles. “Valentina, do you hear the generators?” “Yes,” the girl answered. “They’re on the right. There are two of them. Big. Diesel.”
The giant rival stepped down into the circle. His neck cracked. He carried no weapons, but his fists were the size of bricks. The emissary smiled from above. “Let the Beltrán champion come forward. Or… the female champion.”
Fausto took a step forward, intending to go in himself and end the charade. But Valentina placed her hand on his chest. “Wait,” she said. “You’re not going in there, honey. They’re going to kill us all anyway.” “Exactly,” she said. “That’s why I need you to trust me. Right now.”
Valentina raised her face toward the box, where the emissary’s voice was coming from. “Hey!” she called out in her childlike voice, which sounded strange in that industrial building. “May I ask for one thing?” The emissary laughed. “A last wish, princess?” “Light,” she said, pointing at the spotlights. “It hurts my eyes. Even though I can’t see, it still hurts. Can we fight in the dark? Or is your gorilla afraid of the dark?”
There was a mocking murmur on the catwalks. The giant let out a hoarse laugh. “Turn that shit off,” the emissary ordered, amused. “Let the girl die in peace. We have night-vision goggles up there anyway.”
Fausto understood at once. He looked at Isolda. She nodded almost imperceptibly and put her hand in her bag, where she didn’t keep makeup, but two homemade smoke grenades they had made the night before.
The industrial lights went out with a loud click . The warehouse was plunged into semi-darkness, barely illuminated by the dirty light filtering through the broken skylights in the roof, filtered by the city smog. It was that time of day when everything is gray and the shadows lengthen.
—Now— Valentina whispered.
Isolda threw the grenades to the ground. They weren’t fragmentation grenades, they were cover grenades. A thick, white, and pungent smoke erupted in the center of the circle, filling the ground floor in seconds. At the same time, El Chino and Fausto’s men, who were already waiting for the signal, raised their weapons toward the walkways.
“Fire!!” shouted the emissary, realizing his mistake too late.
All hell broke loose in Vallejo. The gunmen upstairs opened fire into the smoke. Bullets ripped through the concrete, sending up shards of stone that whistling like wasps. Fausto’s men returned fire, creating a deafening wall of noise.
“Get down!” Fausto shouted, trying to shield his daughter. But Valentina wasn’t on the ground. Valentina had vanished in the smoke.
For Fausto, for the giant, for the hitmen with night-vision goggles who saw everything white through the hot smoke… the world had ended. But for Valentina Beltrán, darkness and chaos were her home. The sound of gunfire was deafening to anyone, but she had learned to filter through the Jamaica Market. She heard the giant’s boots pounding, searching blindly for her. She heard his heavy breathing.
The game had changed. It was no longer a tournament. It was a hunt. And the prey had just become the predator.
Chapter 6: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
The smoke was a solid wall. Fausto fired his pistol into the shadows above, guided by the flashes of enemy rifles. He felt Isolda’s shoulder against his. She was firing too, cold and methodical. “Where is she?” Fausto shouted, panic clawing at his throat. “Where is Valentina?!”
“Let her work!” Isolda shouted back, changing the magazine. “Down here, she’s the only one who can see!”
Three meters away from them, inside the white cloud, the giant of the Pacific Cartel flailed his arms in the air. “Get out, you little shit!” he roared, coughing from the chemical smoke. “I’m going to tear you in two!”
Valentina was crouched less than a meter away from him. To her, the smoke didn’t exist. The scene was painted in her mind by vibrations. Each gunshot that echoed off the metal walls gave her an image through “flash echolocation.” She could feel where the columns were, where her father was, and above all, where the monster that wanted to kill her was.
The giant took a heavy step to the left. His boot hit a drain grate. Clang. Valentina moved. She didn’t run; she flowed. She glided across the floor, silent as a ghost. She pulled the knife from her boot. She didn’t aim for the chest or the neck; the man was too tall and she too small. She aimed for what Isolde had taught her: structure. With a precise, brutal motion, she plunged the blade into the back of the giant’s knee, severing tendons, and pulled back.
The man howled, a sound mingling with the bursts of machine-gun fire, and his leg buckled. He fell to his knees, at the girl’s eye level. “Hi,” Valentina whispered. Before the man could react, she spun around and delivered a roundhouse kick straight to his temple. She didn’t have the strength of a grown man, but she had perfect timing and the element of surprise. The giant fell face-first onto the concrete, unconscious or dead. She didn’t care.
“Dad!” she shouted, her voice cutting through the chaos. “Three o’clock! Right column!”
Fausto heard his daughter’s voice. It wasn’t coming from the ground, or from a frightened corner. It was coming from the heart of the battle. “Move!” he ordered Isolda. They ran toward the concrete column Valentina was pointing out. Bullets swept across the spot where they had stood just moments before.
They gathered behind the pillar. Fausto touched his daughter’s face, searching for blood, for wounds. He found only sweat and soot. “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Dad, upstairs. Catwalk two. There’s a shooter who keeps moving. He’s flanking Chino.”
Fausto couldn’t see him. The smoke and darkness obscured his view. But he trusted her. He stepped out of cover, aimed into the darkness of walkway two, and emptied the magazine. A scream was heard, followed by the sound of a body hitting metal sheets. “You hit him,” Valentina confirmed.
Suddenly, the gunfire subsided. The men upstairs had stopped shooting. “Did they run out of bullets?” Isolda asked, wiping the blood from a graze on her cheek. “No,” Valentina said, turning her head like a satellite dish. “They’re coming down. I can hear the metal stairs. There are a lot of them. Ten… twelve… they’re coming from both sides.”
They were surrounded. The smoke was beginning to clear, leaving them exposed. Fausto looked around. El Chino and two of his men were entrenched near the entrance, but they couldn’t reach them without crossing the open field. It was just the three of them against a dozen elite hitmen who were coming down to finish the job at point-blank range.
Isolda pulled out a second knife. Fausto reloaded his last magazine. “Valentina,” Fausto said, his voice thick with terrible emotion, “if this gets bad, I want you to run toward the drain. Don’t look back.” “No,” she replied. She grabbed a heavy, rusty metal pipe lying on the floor. “I’m not running anymore, Dad.”
The shadows of the hitmen began to emerge from the mist, silhouetted against the dim light. Red lasers from tactical sights began to dance across Fausto’s chest. “Drop your weapons,” said the emissary’s voice, now amplified and furious. “The game is over.”
Fausto hesitated. If he shot, they would die. If he surrendered, they would be tortured and then die. “Isolda…” he murmured. “I’m ready,” said the woman from Oaxaca.
But then, something happened that no one at the Rastro expected. A blast, louder than any grenade, shook the entire building. The rear loading door, a three-ton steel structure, flew inward as if it were made of paper. An armored truck, a homemade “Monster” with welded-plate armor, rammed into everything in its path, crushing debris and unsuspecting hitmen.
The truck’s turret swiveled. They weren’t police. They weren’t the army. The truck was painted matte black, with no logos. But Valentina recognized the sound of the engine. “Uncle Victor!” she shouted.
Victor “The Butcher,” Fausto’s former partner who had supposedly retired to a ranch in Michoacán after swearing never to pick up a gun again, was behind the wheel. The rear door of the moving vehicle opened. “Get in, you sons of bitches!” Victor yelled, firing a sawed-off shotgun with one hand.
“Run, Valentina!” Fausto shouted. The three of them ran through a hail of bullets. Isolda covered the rear, deflecting bullets with her own body if necessary, but moving like an acrobat. Valentina ran guided by the sound of the “Monster’s” diesel engine.
They jumped into the armored truck. Bullets ricocheted off the metal like hail. Fausto pulled Isolda inside just as the vehicle spun 180 degrees, skidding across the blood and oil on the floor.
As they sped away, leaving the chaos of the slaughterhouse behind, Fausto looked at his daughter. She was sitting on the metal floor, clutching her knees, breathing heavily. “Are you okay?” he asked. Valentina lifted her face. There was a smear of someone else’s blood on her forehead. “Yes,” she said. And then, with a seriousness that chilled the blood of the adults present, “But I heard the man in the suit on the phone before Uncle Victor came in.” “What did he say?” Isolda asked. “He said, ‘Activate Plan B. Go for the house. Go for the mother.’”
Fausto froze. His wife. Valentina’s mother, who was in a private hospital in the Roma neighborhood recovering from surgery—supposedly safe and anonymous. They had assumed Fausto was the target. They were wrong. The target was the extermination of the entire lineage.
“Victor!” Fausto roared toward the cab. “To the Roma! Now!” The armored vehicle roared and accelerated into the Mexico City night. The war wasn’t over at the slaughterhouse; it was only just beginning.
Chapter 7: Code Red in Rome
The armored SUV, the “Monster,” roared down Insurgentes Avenue like a prehistoric beast unleashed in modern times. Víctor drove with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a shortwave radio, ignoring traffic lights, sidewalks, and the furious honking of taxi drivers.
“They’re five minutes away!” Victor shouted, sweat beading on his temples. “My ‘hawks’ say two trucks pulled into the hospital parking lot ten minutes ago.” “Step on it, damn it!” Fausto bellowed, reloading his weapon with trembling hands.
Valentina sat on the floor of the vehicle, her eyes closed. The siren Víctor had blared to clear a path was deafening, but she was doing something more difficult: she was mentally mapping out the hospital she knew by heart. The Hospital in Colonia Roma. Fourth floor. Room 402. At the end of the hall, on the right. Creaky tile floor. Heavy doors.
“Dad,” she said, her voice cutting through the adults’ panic. “We can’t go in through the lobby.” “What are you saying?” Fausto looked at her, desperate. “They’re already there. They have people in the lobby waiting for you. It’s a bottleneck. They’re going to open fire on us as soon as we go through the revolving door.”
Isolda, who had been checking her knives, looked up. “The girl’s right. They’re expecting a frontal assault.” “So what do we do?” Victor asked, swerving the wheel so hard the armored tires squealed. “Do we fly in?”
“Through the laundry,” Valentina said. “Mom used to take me that way when she didn’t want the press to see us. The suppliers’ entrance is on the back street. It connects directly to the freight elevator. The freight elevator makes a specific noise, a low hum… if we go up there, we’ll come out behind the nurses’ station.”
Fausto looked at his daughter. In the midst of the chaos, she was the only one thinking clearly. Fear no longer paralyzed her; it sharpened her. “Do it, Victor,” Fausto ordered. “To the back street.”
They arrived skidding. The back street was dark, lined with garbage containers. They got out of the moving vehicle. Fausto, Isolda, Valentina, and two of Víctor’s men. The service door was locked with a chain. Isolda didn’t wait to find the key; she shot the lock. They went inside.
The smell of industrial detergent and clean laundry filled their nostrils. They ran toward the freight elevator. Valentina was in the middle, touching the walls, guiding them. “Here,” she said, pointing to a metal door. “The button is at shoulder height.”
They went up. The elevator was slow, agonizing. The mechanical whirring sounded like a countdown. “Listen,” Valentina whispered when the indicator reached the third floor. Everyone fell silent. “I can’t hear anything,” Fausto said. “Exactly,” she replied, pale. “It’s a hospital. There should be nurses, carts, monitors beeping. There’s no sound. They’ve cleared the floor. Either they killed everyone… or they locked them in.”
The doors to the fourth floor opened with a cheerful ding that sounded like an insult. The hallway was dimly lit. Only the red emergency lights were flashing. The silence was deafening.
“Isolda, with me in front,” Fausto whispered. “Valentina, in back.” They advanced in tactical formation. They passed the nurses’ station. Empty. There was a cup of coffee spilled on the floor, still steaming. They’d been taken away quickly.
They were ten meters from room 402. The door was closed. Suddenly, Valentina stopped dead in her tracks and grabbed her father’s shirt. “Stop!” she whispered so softly it was barely audible. “What’s wrong?” “There’s someone on the ceiling,” she said, pointing to the suspended ceiling panels in the hallway. “I can hear breathing. They’re waiting for us to pass underneath.”
Fausto didn’t hesitate. He raised his weapon to the ceiling and fired three times. The ceiling shattered in a shower of plaster and dust. A body fell heavily to the floor, an assault rifle clutched in its hands. A hitman who had been lurking above, ready to execute them from behind.
“They’ve discovered us!” Isolda shouted.
The door to room 402 burst open. A man emerged, using Elena, Valentina’s mother, as a human shield. He had a gun pressed to his temple. Elena was in a hospital gown, with IVs still connected, her eyes wide with terror.
“Drop your weapons!” the hitman shouted. It was the Emissary in the suit, now disheveled and stained with blood. “Drop them, Beltrán, or I’ll blow your wife’s head off!”
Fausto froze. His worst nightmare was coming true. He slowly lowered his pistol. Isolda did the same. The Emissary smiled, nervous but triumphant. “Good. Now, the girl. Have her come with me. The Boss wants to meet the ‘marvel.’”
Valentina stepped forward. She wasn’t carrying a weapon. “Let her go,” Valentina said, her voice calm and out of place. “Your problem is with my dad, not her.” “Shut up and walk, you blind woman.”
Valentina walked slowly down the hallway. She closed her eyes behind her eyelids. Click. She clicked her tongue softly. The sound echoed down the hallway. It echoed off the Emissary. It echoed off her mother. And it echoed off something else… a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, right behind the man’s head.
“I’m not blind,” Valentina whispered when she was three meters away. “I just see differently.”
And then, she did what Isolda had taught her on rainy afternoons. She didn’t attack the man. She attacked his surroundings. Valentina grabbed a metal tray from a first-aid cart that was nearby and threw it with all her might, not at the hitman, but at the fire extinguisher behind him.
The noise was deafening. CLANG! It was a sharp, metallic, unexpected sound. The Emissary, purely out of instinct, turned his head for a millisecond toward the noise. His weapon missed Elena’s temple by two centimeters.
That was all Fausto needed. He pulled out a second, smaller pistol from his anklet, threw himself to the ground, and fired. The shot was perfect. Right in the Emissary’s shoulder. The man screamed and released Elena.
“Now, Isolda!” Valentina shouted. The “She-Wolf” leaped upon the wounded man like a wild animal. There was no mercy. In two seconds, the threat was over.
Fausto ran to his wife, embracing her amidst tears and blood. Valentina stood in the middle of the hallway, breathing the air heavy with gunpowder, listening to the heartbeats of her family, which, for the first time in years, beat in unison.
Chapter 8: The Legend of the White Wolf
Dawn over Mexico City was orange and gray, smog and hope mingled. Police patrols had arrived, but as always in Mexico, they arrived too late, after the deal had been struck and the right calls made. Fausto Beltrán had connections. The incident at the hospital would be reported as a “failed kidnapping attempt by common criminals.” No one would mention the Cartel. No one would mention the war.
Three months later.
The mansion in Pedregal had changed. It no longer resembled a prison. The curtains were open. In the back garden, where Valentina used to stumble in fear, there was now an open-air dojo, with a wooden floor and tatami mats.
Fausto sat on the terrace, drinking coffee, watching the scene. His wife, Elena, now recovered, was beside him, reading a book, but every now and then she looked up to smile.
On the tatami, Valentina and Isolda trained. But it was no longer a teacher instructing a desperate student. It was a match between equals. Valentina, now thirteen, moved with a mesmerizing fluidity. She no longer used a cane inside the house. She didn’t need it. She knew every creak, every draft, every echo.
Isolda threw a high kick. Valentina ducked, spun, and swept. Isolda jumped over the sweep and counterattacked. They stopped, laughing, sweating in the morning sun. Isolda looked toward the terrace and nodded to Fausto. A gesture of mutual respect. The maid had become the aunt, the protector, the blood sister that life owed them.
Fausto put down his cup and walked over to them. Valentina turned her head before he reached her. “Hi, Dad. You’re wearing new shoes. They sound different.” Fausto smiled. “Nothing escapes your notice, does it?”
He knelt before her. He took her hands, those hands now calloused from holding wooden weapons, but still the hands of his little girl. “I had a meeting today,” Fausto said gravely. “With the other Chiefs. The Bosses’ Table.” Isolda tensed. Elena closed her book.
“What happened?” Valentina asked. “They asked about you,” he said. “They’re afraid. There are rumors. They say Beltrán’s daughter is a witch, that she can see in the dark, that he’s a perfect soldier. They offered me peace. Real peace. Nobody wants to mess with the White Wolf’s family.”
Valentina let out a nervous giggle. “White Wolf? Is that my nickname?” “It’s your legend,” Isolda corrected, proudly. “And legends protect more than bullets.”
Fausto looked into his daughter’s eyes, those white eyes that once caused him so much guilt and pain, and that now only inspired awe. “I spent my life building walls so the world wouldn’t touch you, Valentina. I thought my job was to hide you. I was wrong. My job wasn’t to keep the world from hitting you… it was to make sure that, when it did hit you, you could hit back even harder.”
Valentina nodded. “I’m not afraid anymore, Dad. Well… I am. But fear doesn’t control me anymore.” “I know,” Fausto said, kissing her forehead. “And that’s why you’re the strongest leader this family has ever had.”
She stood up and looked at Isolda. “Class is over for today. Shall we get some tacos?” “Al pastor,” Valentina said quickly. “With pineapple. And I heard a new stand opened in Coyoacán that has good music.” “How do you know that?” “I have ears everywhere,” she joked, winking a cloudy eye.
They left the house, not as fugitives, nor as victims. They walked out the front door. Fausto was in front. Isolda behind. And in the middle, walking with the confidence of someone who is the master of her own destiny, was Valentina.
The darkness was still there, in her eyes. The world was still a dangerous place, full of violence and betrayal. But Valentina Beltrán had learned the most important lesson of all: darkness is not an end. It is only a black canvas where those with courage can paint their own light.
And in the streets of Mexico City, amidst whispers and corridos, a new story was born. The story of the girl who didn’t need to see to win. The White Wolf.
END.
