Her hands were still clutching the notary’s papers when Vicente, her own brother-in-law, burst into laughter that echoed throughout the office.

“Oh, Elena,” the man said, adjusting the buckle of his silver belt, not caring that the office was full of the mayor of San Marcos’s men. “My little brother left you 12 hectares of pure rock and dust in the Cañón de las Ánimas. Not even the lizards want to live there.”

Beside her, Don Arturo Garza, the local political boss and mayor, smiled with the false kindness of men accustomed to buying favors. “Sell them to me now for what they’re worth, girl. I’ll give you 10,000 pesos so you can go back to your village and not spend the next few years fighting with the prickly pear cacti and the desert.”

Elena was 34 years old, wearing a black dress that still smelled of the candles from the novena, and with the weary gaze of someone who hadn’t slept for three nights. She had been a rural teacher in the mountains of Jalisco for eight years and knew perfectly well when a group of men were trying to make her believe that two plus two equals five. The pain of her husband Mateo’s death, which had occurred just 16 days earlier in a supposed “accident” on the highway, weighed heavily on her chest, but the public humiliation her in-laws were subjecting her to ignited a spark of fury within her. Mateo’s mother, Doña Consuelo, looked at her with disdain from the corner, silently blaming her for the tragedy.

“The 12 hectares are not for sale, Don Arturo,” Elena replied firmly, putting the deeds in her worn leather bag. Vicente spat on the tiled floor. “You’re going to starve to death, you stubborn widow,” his brother-in-law declared.

That afternoon, the wind blowing down from the mountains brought a stifling heat.

Officially, Commander Rojas, the local police chief, had closed the case, saying Mateo’s truck had lost its brakes. But Elena knew the difference between an accident and murder. Because three days before he died, Mateo, his hands trembling and looking out the window at the dark street, had whispered to her: “If anything happens to me, don’t trust my brother. Go to the old ranch in the canyon and look under the stone heart in the dry well.”

Chief Garza wielded absolute power in the region, controlling the agave fields and bribing and intimidating the authorities. Elena knew she was alone. Her husband’s entire family had turned their backs on her, siding with the man who ruled the town. So, the next morning, she packed a blanket, four cans of food, two bottles of water, and Mateo’s old hunting shotgun with twelve cartridges. She climbed into an old pickup truck and drove toward the Cañón de las Ánimas.

The path was a scar of red earth. Upon arriving, she found the ruins of an adobe house, consumed by time, and, 15 meters away, the stone rim of a well that had been dry for 20 years. The heat was infernal. Elena descended into the well with a rope and, searching through the darkness and dust, found an enormous rock in the exact shape of a heart. With bleeding hands, she managed to pry the slab loose. Beneath it, wrapped in thick plastic, was a metal package.

Just as Elena pulled the package out and began to climb toward the surface, the sound of engines broke the silence of the canyon. Three black pickup trucks without license plates pulled up in front of the ruins. From the bottom of the pit, Elena heard the unmistakable voice of her brother-in-law, Vicente.

“Spray gasoline on the house and the well!” Vicente shouted, laughing cruelly. “Don Arturo will pay 500,000 pesos if we make sure the widow disappears today with her stones.”

The smell of fuel filled the stifling air as the sound of a metal lighter echoed off the canyon walls. It was impossible to imagine the nightmare that was about to unfold…