Mauricio starts talking fast. Misunderstanding. Stress. Mislabeled medication. Partial recordings. Concern for the business. He keeps talking long after it is obvious no one believes him. That is the thing about entitled men. They think the story remains alive as long as their mouths are moving.
The bailiff touches his elbow just as he insists the staff were manipulated. He looks genuinely shocked when the handcuffs appear.
Maybe he believed family gave him one final shield.
Not today.
Later, in the courthouse hallway, after Vega is buried in clerks and Salazar is already calling the medical board and Teresa is loudly informing anyone nearby that she knew something was wrong from the pills, Sofía climbs onto your chair again and wraps both hands around yours.
“Bad man gone?” she asks.
You look at Carmen. She looks back—tired, fierce, and already calculating what comes next in rent, school, groceries, and survival, because women like her cannot afford moral victories unless someone helps translate them into math.
“Yes,” you tell the little girl. “Gone.”
That should have been the end.
It wasn’t.
The real work began after the arrest, the way real work always does.