In the car, the twins screamed when they saw their mother lying motionless.

—Mommy!—squealed Sofia.

—She’s not dead—Rogelio lied with a firmness that was a plea. —She’s not going anywhere.

In the emergency room, his last name opened doors with the same ease with which it once closed doors. “Code blue. Severe hypothermia.” Rogelio stood in the hallway with the girls in his arms, feeling his power become useless at the sound of a monitor.

When the doctor left, the relief lasted a second.

“She’s alive,” the doctor said. “But she’s critical. Severe damage. Pneumonia. The next 48 hours are crucial.”

Rogelio looked at Valentina and Sofía, asleep on his lap. The dark circles under those gray eyes were an accusation. Elena, the longtime housekeeper, came running and took charge of the girls with a tenderness Rogelio didn’t know how to offer. And then Rogelio truly opened the backpack, like someone opening a stolen life. He found a notebook. Numbers. Debts. Sale of Mom’s ring: €150. Sale of the guitar: €60. “Julián died today.” “They kicked us out.” “I told them we were air fairies, and fairies don’t eat.”

Rogelio closed the notebook with a nauseating feeling. He had nine zeros in his account, and his daughter had sold a ring to buy food.

The next morning, guided by an address found on a court document, he went to Vallecas. He went down to the basement of a damp building and knocked on a swollen door. A neighbor said the phrase that finally broke him:

—The blonde girl was kicked out a month ago… by the police. It was horrible. The girls were screaming.

She gave him a box of drawings. Rogelio opened it in the car, trembling. In one drawing, a man in a suit and crown: “Grandpa King saving Mom.” The image burned his eyes.

And then she found the eviction notice. She read the heading. The blood drained from her body.

“Vertex Real Estate, a subsidiary of the Montenegro Group.”

His company. His name. His “asset cleansing” policy. His blanket orders executed without regard for names. He had sent the police. He had unknowingly evicted his own daughter… and the worst part was that he had done the same to other families, hundreds, thousands, as if they were dust.

He went back to the park and sat on the stone bench. Under the bushes were cardboard boxes, a makeshift bed, and a jar with a dried flower. He imagined Camila there, telling stories about a magical grandfather while the cold gnawed at her bones.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and the word broke into a sob.

She returned to the hospital. Camila woke up in a panic, pulling out her IV, believing they were taking her daughters away. Rogelio showed her the girls. Camila calmed down when she saw them, but her eyes, when they met his gaze, hardened like ice.

“What are you doing here?” he whispered.

He had no defenses.

—I found them… You were dying.

“Because you left me there,” she coughed. “I asked you for help. I begged you. You hung up on me.”

Rogelio lowered his head.

—I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But they… they’re not to blame.

Camila didn’t forgive him. But she accepted the help for her daughters’ sake, like one accepts bitter medicine. Rogelio, for the first time, didn’t try to buy love: he tried to learn it.

He took the girls to the mansion. The marble, once a source of pride, now resembled a tomb. One night, Sofia knocked fearfully on his door. “Can I sleep with you? There are shadows.” Rogelio, the man who always slept alone, let her in without hesitation. He watched the door all night like an old dog.

She transformed the mansion into a home: toys, cookies, color. When Camila left the hospital, she arrived in a wheelchair, fragile, wary. The girls laughed. She smiled, but their eyes watched.

Three days later, during a dinner, the truth exploded with the man Rogelio had fired to cover his tracks: Serrano burst in soaking wet, furious, and pointed at Camila like someone stabbing a knife.

—Do you recognize her? She’s the tenant of apartment B. You ordered her evicted. Vertex is yours. I have the emails. I have the signature.

The phone on the tablecloth gleamed like a weapon. Camila read it. And something died in her eyes.

—You…—she said, without shouting, without tears—. You kicked us out.

Rogelio tried to explain. “I didn’t know it was you.” But the sentence was useless. It changed nothing.

Camila wanted to go out into the storm with the girls. Rogelio didn’t open the door. Outside there was death. Inside there was betrayal.

And then he did the one thing he had never done before: he knelt down, not to win, but because he could no longer stand.

“I’m a monster,” he said. “I fired you out of jealousy. Jealousy that you loved someone more than money. I signed those orders without looking at names because to me, people were just numbers. But when I saw my granddaughters in the snow… the ice broke. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m asking you to use me. Stay for them. Make me pay by helping every family I hurt.”

Camila stared at him for a long time. She looked at her daughters. She looked at the door. And she chose to survive.

“I’ll stay,” she finally said. “But the rules change. Vertex disappears. You create a foundation. We help every family. And if you lie to me again, I’m leaving for good.”

Rogelio nodded as if he were signing a decent contract for the first time.

A year later, snow fell again on Madrid. But it was no longer a shroud. It was silent confetti. In the Montenegro mansion, the air smelled of cinnamon, roast turkey, and hot chocolate. The Christmas tree was decorated with cardboard ornaments alongside expensive baubles, mixing worlds without asking permission.

Rogelio, in a ridiculous red sweater with a knitted reindeer, sat on the juice-stained rug, and the stain seemed like a trophy to him. Camila came downstairs radiant, strong, in a green dress, her eyes full of life. The girls, now five years old, ran around shouting.

And guests arrived whom he would have previously called “assets”: real families, with hard-working hands and genuine laughter. The lady from Vallecas brought a cake. The Martínezes, the Garcías, the Pérezes. The Julián García Foundation had transformed money into a refuge, and pride into service.

During dinner, a humble man stood up to toast to regained dignity. Rogelio, his glass trembling, looked at the full table and understood something that before would have seemed like cheap poetry: wealth wasn’t the bank, it was the name someone spoke with affection.

That night, Valentina pulled Camila’s hand.

—Mommy… the piano.

Camila sat down. Her fingers, which a year before had been numb with cold, flew across the keys. She played a simple melody, the song Julián used to hum to ward off storms. The notes filled the house like a blessing. Rogelio leaned against the fireplace, watching silently, and a tear rolled down his cheek without shame.

Later, he took the girls to their room, two cloud-shaped beds. He sat between them.

“I’m not going to read today,” he said. “Today I’m going to tell you a true story. About a king who lived in an ice castle… and believed his treasure was coins.”

—How silly—yawned Sofia.

“Very silly,” Rogelio smiled. “Until one night he found two fairies in the snow… and the ice in his heart broke. It hurt terribly. But when it broke, he could feel.”

Valentina looked at him with that brutal wisdom of children.

—That’s you, grandpa.

Rogelio kissed her forehead.

—Yes, my love. And you saved me.

When they left the room, Camila was waiting for him in the hallway. She gave him a brief, genuine hug, without any strings attached.

—Thank you for keeping your word—she whispered.

Rogelio didn’t respond with speeches. He simply breathed in that moment like someone learning to live again.

She went downstairs to the living room, looked out the window at the lamppost where a year before she had seen two small burgundy patches in the snow. Then she looked inside: toys scattered about, dishes left uncollected, the messiness of happiness.

He rested his forehead against the cold glass and smiled, not like a tycoon, but like a man.

—You arrived on time—he told himself, and for the first time in his life, he felt that it was true.