“Dad, stop the car!” he shouted, panic in his voice. “Those kids digging through the trash… they’re just like me.”

—Protect them from what?

The woman collapsed into a chair.

—The hospital lied.

The air turned cold.

-That?

—When Patricia died… three babies were born.

Eduardo felt the world tilting.

—Triplets.

The words took a while to enter her mind.

—But someone paid the hospital to make two of them disappear.

Eduardo felt his blood boil.

-Who?

Marcia looked at him.

—Your father.

The silence exploded.

—He wanted only one heir.

—Not three.

—He said he would divide the fortune.

Eduardo couldn’t breathe.

—So he paid to have the other babies “die.”

Marcia continued through tears.

—I got them out of the hospital.

—I didn’t know what to do.

—I tried to raise them.

—But I had no money.

—When my husband got sick… I lost everything.

Eduardo remembered the pile of garbage.

The rain.

The cardboard boxes.

—Is that why you left them in the street?

Marcia closed her eyes.

—I knew you’d be passing by that street.

—Every afternoon.

—I was hoping you’d see them.

Silence returned.

Eduardo left the house without saying anything.

That night he returned to his mansion.

Luke and Matthew were asleep.

Pedro too.

The three children together on the same sofa.

Three identical heads.