—Sir, my dad has a watch just like yours.
Don Roberto Mendoza felt his chest sink. The fork slipped from his fingers and clattered against the porcelain with a clang that, at that moment, sounded like a gunshot. His partners, Ricardo Salgado and Fernando Ibarra, stopped talking about the million-dollar contract in front of them. The background music continued, but it seemed to be coming from very far away, as if someone had put it inside a box.
At the restaurant entrance, guards were holding a skinny, barefoot boy with a torn shirt, his gaze fixed on Roberto’s left wrist. He looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old. His black hair plastered to his forehead with sweat; his dark brown eyes, however, shone with a rare determination in such a fragile body.
Roberto was not a man easily moved. At fifty-eight, he had built a construction empire with cement, gritted teeth, and a practical cruelty that the world mistook for leadership. His name was plastered on billboards along Reforma Avenue, on towers in Santa Fe, in shopping malls in Guadalajara, and on condominiums in Cancún. No one dared contradict him without paying a price.
And yet, that phrase twisted her heart.
Because the watch he wore—a gold Patek Philippe with a blue dial—wasn’t just “an expensive watch.” Twenty-two years earlier, he had commissioned three, as if gold could seal something that was crumbling inside him. One was on his wrist, another kept in the safe at his home in Polanco, untouched, like a painful reminder to touch. The third… had disappeared with his son, Miguel Ángel, the night he kicked him out of the house.
“What… what did you just say?” Roberto managed to ask, in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own.
The boy took a step. The guards held him tighter and he grimaced, but he didn’t back down.
—I said my dad has a watch just like yours, sir. I saw it when you walked by on the sidewalk. It’s the same one… it even has lettering on the back.
The entire restaurant stared. A waiter froze, holding a tray in mid-air. A couple near the window craned their necks with morbid curiosity. Roberto felt the blood pounding in his temples.
“Which letters?” he whispered, though he already knew.
The boy swallowed hard.
—RMM. “Roberto Mendoza for Miguel.” My dad taught it to me a bunch of times.
Roberto’s legs buckled. He gripped the edge of the table. Ricardo instinctively stood up to support him, and Fernando opened his mouth, ready to call for a doctor. Roberto heard nothing. He only saw the boy, dirty and stubborn, repeating the impossible with a frightening nonchalance.
“Let him go,” Roberto ordered, and his tone was so decisive that the guards obeyed as if the word were a key.
The boy walked to the table. Up close, Roberto noticed details that struck him like memories: the nose slightly crooked to the left, a fine scar above the right eyebrow, the shape of the jaw. It wasn’t Miguel, but it was… like seeing a mirror with time running.
“What’s your name?” he asked, and was surprised by the softness of his own voice.
—Emiliano, sir. Emiliano… Mendoza.
Roberto repeated that surname silently, as if testing it on his tongue.
—Your dad… where is he?
Emiliano lowered his gaze to the gleaming marble floor. His shoulders trembled, as if his body were breaking where no one could see.
—He died three months ago.
Roberto felt like his world was collapsing around him. Twenty-two years waiting for a return he never bravely sought. Twenty-two years pretending the absence was punishment, not guilt. And now, the final news: Miguel no longer existed, not even to be forgiven, not even to be hated face to face.
“What about…?” she asked, with a lump in her throat.
“Cancer, sir. In his lungs,” Emiliano said, pressing his lips together. “He worked in construction. He carried sacks, climbed scaffolding… he breathed dust all day. He never had enough money for a doctor until it was too late.”
The word “construction” stung Roberto. He thought of his construction projects, the yellow hard hats, the hundreds of anonymous men coming and going like cogs in the machine. He thought of the horrifying possibility that Miguel might have worked on one of his projects without his knowledge, just meters away, invisible to his own father.
—Sit down —Roberto said, pointing to the chair next to him—. And have them bring him something to eat.
Emiliano sat down carefully, as if the leather of the chair might accuse him of soiling it. He ordered enchiladas in a low voice, embarrassed.
“Bring him that and… and more,” Roberto ordered the waiter. “Anything.”
Ricardo and Fernando exchanged a glance. It was too personal to be there, but neither dared to get up. In Roberto’s world, staying meant understanding the power dynamics; leaving meant losing information.
“Tell me about him,” Roberto asked, and this time his voice broke. “Tell me about Miguel.”
Emiliano spoke slowly, like someone fearfully reopening a wound. He recounted how Miguel lived for years in Iztapalapa with his wife, Rosa, a taco vendor who worked from dawn. Despite their poverty, they were happy. Miguel almost never spoke of his wealthy family, but on weary nights, when pain crept up his shoulders, he would take out his watch and clutch it as if it were a metal heart.
“He said he’d disappointed his father,” Emiliano said, his eyes moist. “That he was never good enough. That you mocked him when he said he wanted to be an architect. That he wanted to design buildings, not carry rebar. And that when he insisted… you kicked him out. You told him he wasn’t your son anymore.”
Roberto closed his eyes and saw the scene with cruel clarity: August, the open door, Miguel with a backpack and a wet face, his wife pleading in the middle, and him… him shouting as if love were property, as if obeying were synonymous with being worthy.
“I was wrong,” Roberto whispered, the words catching in his throat. “So wrong…”
Emiliano took a deep breath, gathering his strength for the worst.
“Do you want to know the worst part, sir? My father died clutching that watch. In his last days, on morphine, unable to breathe… he kept saying his name. He said he wanted to apologize. My mother died afterward, of sadness… I think. And she left me with only two things: the watch and the address of this restaurant. She told me, ‘If you’re ever lost, look here.'”
Roberto felt tears welling up in his eyes. For the first time in decades, he didn’t care who saw him cry.
“Did you bring… your watch?” he asked.
Emiliano pulled a bundle wrapped in an old rag from the pocket of his torn trousers. He unwrapped it with reverent care. In the light, the gold appeared clean, untouched, almost insolent. There were the letters: RMM.
Roberto took his watch off and placed it beside it. Two identical watches, two gleaming fragments of a broken story…
Fernando was the first to regain a practical tone.
—Roberto… this… is serious, yes. But you need proof. DNA. Documents. There are people who…
Emiliano stood up abruptly, indignation trembling in his voice.
“I’m not here to ask for money!” he said. “I just wanted you to know that my father existed. That he wasn’t just another invisible worker.”
Roberto raised his hand.
“I believe you,” he said firmly. “But let’s do this right. Not so I doubt you… but so no one can take away what’s rightfully yours when I recognize you.”
And then he made the decision he had been putting off for twenty-two years.
“You’re coming with me today,” he said. “To my house. In Polanco. You’ll sleep in a bed, you’ll eat, you’ll study. And you’ll decide what you want to be. Not what I want. Not what the world wants.”
Emiliano looked at him as if he had been offered a new language.
“Why…?” he whispered. “I’m a street kid.”
Roberto walked beside her and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Because I failed your father,” he said. “And you’re giving me a chance not to fail again.”
Emiliano wept then, without trying to hide it, as if he had finally found a place where he could be a child. Roberto hugged him tightly. In the most expensive restaurant in Mexico City, amidst drinks and curious glances, a feared man and a homeless boy clung to each other as if the embrace could repair time.
Three weeks later, the DNA confirmed the obvious: Emiliano was Mendoza. But the drama was just beginning.
Roberto brought about profound changes: in the company, in his family, in his life, and in the safety of the workers. He founded a community project in Iztapalapa: Vivienda Digna Miguel Ángel Mendoza (Miguel Ángel Mendoza Dignified Housing). Emiliano, carrying his father’s watch in his pocket, and Roberto, with his own on his wrist, laid the first stone, rebuilding not only buildings, but lives.
Belated love, reconciliation, and justice for the invisible have finally found a place to shine.
