Chapter 2 - The Combination of the Past
The silence that fell over the dining room was heavy and suffocating. Alejandro noticed the shift in my posture immediately. The color receded from his cheeks, replaced by a sudden, sickly sheen of cold sweat.
“What?” he asked, his voice suddenly pitching up an octave, stripped of its bluster. “What is it? Who texted you?”
I didn't answer. I didn't even look at him. My fingers felt numb, cold as river ice, as I turned away from the table and walked slowly down the short hallway toward the den.
“Mariana, stop right there,” Alejandro commanded, his footsteps heavy and frantic right behind me. “Put the phone down. Don't look at whatever spam message some scammer sent you—”
“Seven years ago today,” I whispered, my hand resting against the edge of the heavy cherry-wood bookshelf in the den.
Alejandro lunged forward, trying to grab my wrist. “Don't touch that! You have no right to—!”
I pivoted with a swift, sharp authority born of a thousand emergency room scuffles, stiff-arming him back against the doorframe. The shock on his face was total. For seven years, I had let him walk over me, wept quietly in corners, and absorbed his emotional abuse. He had completely forgotten that before the grief broke me, I was a woman who routinely held human lives together with my bare hands.
“Don't touch me,” I said quietly.
I turned back to the concealed wall safe hidden behind the heavy leather-bound medical volumes. My fingers hovered over the brass dial.
0-9-1-4.
The exact month, day, and year our daughter Lucía was taken from us—a date Alejandro claimed he commemorated with quiet, unbroken grief every single year.
I spun the dial: left to zero, right to nine, left to one, right to four.
Click.
The heavy steel door of the safe swung open with a smooth, oiled hiss.
Alejandro let out a ragged, desperate sob, slumping against the wall. “Mariana... please. Don't look inside. It’s not what you think. I can explain everything—”
May you like
I reached past the stack of emergency cash and my old medical license, pulling out a thick, manila legal folder bulging with documents, printed email chains, and a small, secondary burner phone.
---
