It was his last job, but he honored his ritual all the same. He stood naked on the terrace of his favorite room — the most coveted terrace in one of the finest hotels on the Costa del Sol — his right hand cradling a glass of his best whisky, a pour of Macallan Dark 1824.
The sun moved across his skin and warmed the amber liquid while his gaze held steady on the interior of the room. Don Diego was contemplating the naked body of his mark as he took another slow sip. He thought back on the hundreds of times he had done this, but this experience would be the last. He rose from the lounge chair without hurry and walked inside in complete silence.
Laura Brown, the woman resting in his bed, was the wife of one of the most powerful politicians in the Eurozone. She was a simple woman — decent, noble, and condemned by her bloodline, her position, and her beauty.
When he finished dressing, he did two things before he left. He approached the bed and pressed a soft kiss to her ankle, his touch so light it wouldn't wake her.
"I'm sorry," he whispered as he said goodbye.
The second thing: he pulled the covers carefully around her and murmured a plea for forgiveness close to her ear.
He closed the door, straightened his navy Emilio Tucci jacket, and went down to the front desk to settle his bill and never return.
The sadness in the employees' eyes was plain to anyone passing through the main lobby. They were all witnessing the farewell of the hotel's finest guest — a relationship stretching back just over twenty years. Don Diego was beloved and admired by everyone. By men and women alike, and not merely because of his generous tips, but for his elegance, his manner, his respect for each and every member of the staff, and the mystery that trailed his shadow.
When he opened the door of his silver Porsche Cayman 718, he glanced back and saw all the front desk staff and a few of the housekeepers applauding his departure. From that moment on, the lives of many people — connected to him directly or not — were changed forever. The head of the front desk was unjustly fired for having let the hotel's greatest guest of all time walk out the door. The housekeepers had to tighten their budgets at home, cut off from the substantial weekly tips they had come to rely on. Laura Brown's life was destroyed, and given the tremendous public fallout that followed from that night with Don Diego, she chose to end her life by throwing herself from one of the highest bridges in her city.
He, for his part, sold his luxury car, donated his thirty-some suits of haute couture, and returned to his ordinary life — forgetting, completely and deliberately, everything he had done. Only in the moments before his death did he decide to confess it all. His final wish was that everything he recounted be written as a novel, divided into confessions.
I, Juan José — his nephew — had the privilege of listening to all of it, recording it, and writing it down exactly as he wished. This novel is the confession of a man who had everything, yet caused tremendous harm. The sole purpose of publishing this story is to unmask certain people and to beg forgiveness from others. It is the story of the man the town called: EL ZURO.