“Excellent,” he said. “This is a turning point. Alex’s testimony will be direct evidence. We’ll send someone to take an official statement soon.”
But the question that haunted me remained the same:
Who was the mysterious assistant?
When Alex calmed down, I asked him again. He couldn’t remember the name.
“I only remember that he was an old friend,” Alex said helplessly. “Someone I trusted a lot, but with whom I’d lost touch. I ran into him by chance a few days before everything happened. I had a bad feeling… so I asked him to keep an eye on you.”
In the following days, while we waited for Alex to fully recover, we had moments of true closeness; no lies, no secrets. We talked about the baby, about the life we would rebuild.
Then Detective Morales came to take Alex’s official statement. Alex told him everything, detail by detail, and his testimony perfectly matched the evidence.
“With this,” Morales said, “we can pursue an international arrest warrant for Romero Vargas.” “He can’t hide forever.”
Isabella and her brother were facing trial for their crimes: fraud, conspiracy, and facilitating harm. I didn’t attend. I didn’t want to see them again.
Life began to return to normal. Alex’s memory almost fully recovered.
But the name of the mysterious friend remained missing: an untied knot in our hearts.
Until one afternoon, while collecting Alex’s belongings that the hospital had kept since his admission, I found something small in his jacket pocket.
A wooden key ring with a finely carved maple leaf.
I turned it over in my hand, feeling a strange familiarity.
I showed it to Alex.
He stared at it, and then his eyes lit up as if someone had flipped a switch.
“The maple leaf…” he whispered. “The Maple Leaf Café.”
He took a deep breath. “That’s it.” "That's where I met him."
His memory flooded back to me.
"That person," he said firmly, "is Marcus."
"Marcus?" I repeated, stunned.
Alex shook his head quickly. "It's not Charles. It's someone else. Marcus was my best friend in college. His family moved abroad, and we lost touch. I ran into him by chance at that café."
Marcus.
A name I'd never heard before.
But before I could ask any more questions, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
