“Is it true?” he asked, his voice trembling.
Isabella nodded.
Mateo suddenly jumped to his feet, knocking the chair backward. Guards rushed forward, thinking he might try to escape, but he wasn’t running. Instead he shouted with a force he had never shown during his entire time in prison.
“I’m innocent! I’ve always been innocent! Now I can prove it!”
When the guards tried to pull him away, Isabella clung tightly to him.
“It’s time everyone hears the truth,” she said calmly.
From the observation window, Colonel Alvarez watched the entire moment unfold. Every instinct he had told him something important had just happened. He replayed the surveillance footage repeatedly—the whisper, Mateo’s reaction, the girl’s quiet certainty.
No one knew what she had said. But whatever it was had brought life back into a man who had already seemed half dead.