[Camila's POV]
The restaurant was closed on Monday mornings. I sat in my office above La Casita de Mila with a manila folder and a cup of coffee that had gone cold twenty minutes ago.
Inside the folder: everything Eduardo and my contacts had compiled on Mateo Cruz. It was thin. Three pages. A work history that began fourteen months ago at a restaurant in Little Havana. A Cuban immigrant, arrived in Miami with no prior address, no family in the area, no criminal record, no digital footprint. Before fourteen months ago, Mateo Cruz did not exist.
Nobody appeared from nothing.
I turned the pages. Eduardo had done the legwork. He'd talked to the restaurant owner who'd first hired Cruz. The man remembered him: quiet, hard worker, showed up on time, didn't socialize. Eduardo had checked immigration records — Cruz had a Cuban entry permit, processed through the standard refugee channel. The permit was real. The processing was real. The paperwork was flawless.
