Voice Over: London

You think you can run from the past. Huyes. But the thing about shadows is they don’t need to chase you; they wait. Patient. Inevitable. Like La Colonia de Sombras herself—my old neighborhood. The kind of place where dreams don’t grow; they get buried.

I grew up knowing two things: survival and sacrifice. My brother, he was the responsible one—el hombre de la casa. He saw the angles, knew the moves. Me? I was the lookout, the mule, the smaller one who was easy to discount. ‘Do it for mamá, pajarito,’ he said. ‘Para la familia.’ And I did. Every time I handed over a bag of perico or slipped cash to a Sicario, I told myself it was just a means to an end. But you live in that world long enough, you start forgetting where the means stop and the ends begin.

I got out. Barely. Clawed my way through school. And now I trade in other people’s treasures, their stories. That’s what I tell myself anyway—that I’m rewriting mine, burying the past under a coat of polish and a museum plaque.

But the past has teeth. It whispers, ¿Recuerdas? Remember when you made that drop at two in the morning? Remember the sting of mamá’s tears when she found out how we were paying the rent? Remember the silence when your brother got caught, and you didn’t? He said, ‘Corre, pajarito. Empezar de nuevo. Sé mejor.’ And I did. I ran so far I almost don’t recognize the person I left behind.

Here’s the thing no one tells you about running. It doesn’t matter how fast you go or how far you get—the weight of your choices keeps pace. Every artifact I touch, every auction I host, I feel it. That itch in my palms. That voice that asks, What would you have been without La Colonia? Without your brother? Without the dirt under your nails?

Choosing what’s right over what’s easy—people act like it’s heroic. It’s not. It’s hard. It’s lonely. It’s carrying the echoes of every wrong turn you’ve ever made and still forcing yourself to walk forward.

Los ecos nunca desaparecen. Not completely. The trick is… learning to live with them. I’m not rewriting my future; I’m stitching it together from the shreds of my past. And maybe that’s all any of us can do.

But some nights… some nights I still hear him—my brother’s voice. ‘Run, pajarito.’ And I wonder if he knew the truth all along. That you can leave La Colonia, but La Colonia never leaves you.