Can you imagine leaving a high-stakes meeting, stepping onto a crowded street, and having a child ask you to help bury her sister?
It sounds like fiction, but it was the moment that split Alexander Moreira’s life in two.
Alexander was the kind of man who always seemed impenetrable.
CEO of a major tech company in Salvador, accustomed to moving millions with a signature, owner of a penthouse overlooking the ocean, and a schedule packed down to the minute.
To the world, he was a success.
To himself, ever since losing his wife Helena three years earlier, he was just a machine that breathed.
He woke every day at five, reviewed reports before touching his coffee, and buried himself in work as if sinking into a pit with no bottom. The more he worked, the less space there was for the memory of the woman he couldn’t save.
That scorching December morning, the heat sat over Salvador like a heavy cloud. Alexander walked along Avenida do Sol after meeting with foreign investors. Any other businessman would’ve celebrated. He didn’t. Numbers couldn’t drown out the silence of his home.
Vendors shouted, tourists took photos, workers crossed the streets with lunch bags. Noise everywhere. Yet Alexander felt like a ghost watching someone else’s world.
Until he heard crying.
It wasn’t loud. It was a muffled, ancient kind of grief. He could’ve kept walking—he had a thousand times before. But something, maybe Helena’s voice buried deep, made him stop.
The sound came from a narrow alley. Dim light. Thick air. And at the very end, he saw her.
A girl, about eight. Hair stuck to her forehead, face streaked with dirt and tears, her clothes patched together, bare feet bruised.
In her arms lay a toddler, limp like a broken doll.
The baby’s skin was pale, lips cracked, body frighteningly still. The heat outside only made the coldness of that child more unreal.
The girl lifted her head. Her dark eyes held fear, fatigue, and a fragile kind of dignity.
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