The year was 1926, and the port of Veracruz glittered beneath the heat of a dying sun. Smoke from the shipyards curled like ghosts above the sea, carrying the scent of metal, salt, and debt. Among the silhouettes of men bowed by labor, one figure stood untouched by dust or sweat — Esteban de Montéverde, the architect of oceans, the man whose name alone could silence an entire dock. His eyes, pale as winter steel, drifted over the workers like a hunter surveying prey. He spoke little, but his silence cut deeper than commands. To them, he was not a man — he was the embodiment of greed carved into flesh.

And yet, that same day, amid the clatter of chains and the shouts of the poor, his gaze caught something that did not belong to his world — a girl, barely twenty, teaching barefoot children how to read by tracing letters in the dust. Her laughter carried through the wind like a sound not meant for men like him to hear. It was soft, and light, and cruelly pure.

When the lesson ended and the children scattered, she noticed him watching. For a moment, her eyes met his — brown and bright against his cold grey — and he felt a strange sting beneath his ribs, something he mistook for anger. He walked toward her, his cane tapping sharply against the stones, the crowd parting before him like a tide before a storm.

“You’re teaching them?” he asked in a tone so smooth it almost hid the venom beneath. “What for? They’ll never become anything more than what they are.”