Chain of Favors

In a city where courtesy is mistaken for obligation and helping others becomes a chain, favors are the most powerful currency. What begins as a gesture of kindness-a recommendation, a signature, a loan, an act of care-transforms into an invisible system that binds lives, corrupts institutions, and legitimizes power. Through thirty-three chapters and multiple voices, *Network of Favors* explores how gratitude can be a trap, how solidarity can degenerate into complicity, and how dependency becomes the norm. María, Elías, Rómulo, Silvano, and other characters orbit in a polyphonic chorus that reveals the metamorphosis of the favor: from innocent gesture to intimate poison, from poison to structural corruption. The novel offers neither easy absolution nor condemnation: each chapter closes with a Socratic question that forces the reader to look in the mirror. Because in this city, we have all asked for, given, or received a favor. And we are all, in some way, trapped in its outstanding debt.