Chapter 3 - HIS MOTHER’S VOICE
Alejandro took out his phone.
Lucía reached for his wrist.
“Don’t.”
He looked down at her hand.
She released him immediately.
“Why?”
“Because she will lie.”
“Then I want to hear how she lies.”
Lucía shook her head.
“You still think this is about catching someone in a contradiction.”
“What is it about?”
“Surviving people who never suffer consequences.”
Alejandro dialed his mother anyway.
Doña Elena answered on the second ring.
“Alejandro, darling.”
Her voice was warm.
Too warm.
“I was about to call you.”
“I heard.”
A pause.
“I assume there has been an unpleasant misunderstanding at the hotel.”
Alejandro looked at Lucía.
She gave a hollow smile.
“Is that what we call it?” he asked.
“Alejandro, where are you?”
“With my wife.”
Silence.
It lasted only two seconds.
But those two seconds destroyed something sacred.
Then Elena sighed.
“I was afraid this would happen.”
“What exactly were you afraid of?”
“That woman finding a way back into your life.”
Lucía looked away.
Alejandro felt rage rise in his throat.
“That woman is Lucía.”
“I am aware of her name.”
“She is eight months pregnant.”
Another pause.
Then Elena said the cruelest thing with the calmest voice.
“That proves nothing.”
Alejandro’s face changed.
Lucía closed her eyes.
“Mother, choose your next words very carefully.”
“I have been choosing my words carefully for seven months.”
“Did you send her a separation agreement?”
“I protected you from a scandal.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I did what you were emotionally incapable of doing.”
Alejandro stepped away from Lucía because he suddenly felt dangerous.
“Did you forge my signature?”
Elena laughed softly.
“Do not be dramatic.”
“Did Mateo forge my signature?”
“Alejandro, come home.”
“No.”
“We should discuss this privately.”
“You already discussed my marriage privately without me.”
Lucía’s eyes moved to him.
There was no forgiveness in them.
But there was attention.
Elena lowered her voice.
“She cheated on you.”
Lucía flinched.
Alejandro saw it.
“What proof?”
“You saw the photographs.”
“I saw photographs of Lucía leaving a restaurant with a man.”
“That man was touching her.”
“He was her obstetrician’s husband.”
Lucía looked startled.
Alejandro remembered the face now.
The man in the photographs had been Sergio Marín, an architect who had worked briefly with Montero Construction.
He was also married to Dr. Camila Marín, the obstetrician Lucía had quietly begun seeing.
Alejandro’s stomach turned.
“You knew who he was.”
Elena did not answer.
“You knew.”
“A photograph does not need a biography to be compromising.”
Lucía whispered.
“My God.”
Alejandro covered the phone.
“What?”
“Sergio drove me home because I nearly fainted during my first prenatal appointment.”
Alejandro stared at her.
The photographs his mother had shown him appeared in his memory one by one.
Lucía leaning against Sergio’s shoulder.
Sergio helping her into a car.
Lucía holding his arm.
All of it had looked intimate when Elena presented the images without context.
All of it looked completely different now.
He uncovered the phone.
“You hired someone to follow her.”
“I hired someone to protect my son from humiliation.”
“You manufactured humiliation.”
“You were blind.”
“No.”
Alejandro’s voice dropped.
“I was obedient.”
That finally silenced her.
He continued.
“And you used it.”
“Alejandro, you do not understand what she was doing to this family.”
“Tell me.”
“She was collecting documents.”
Lucía’s head snapped around.
Alejandro noticed.
“What documents?”
Elena realized too late that she had said too much.
“Nothing that concerns you tonight.”
“Everything concerns me tonight.”
“Come home.”
“No.”
“Then you are making a mistake.”
“Maybe.”
Alejandro stared at Lucía.
“But at least this one will be mine.”
He ended the call.
The corridor stayed silent.
Ernesto looked like a man wishing he could disappear into a wall.
Lucía stared at Alejandro.
“You really didn’t know.”
It was the first time she had said it without accusation.
“No.”
He swallowed.
“But I believed her.”
Lucía’s expression tightened again.
“That matters.”
“I know.”
“You believed photographs instead of asking me one question.”
“I know.”
“You believed I left instead of wondering why every message stopped on the same day.”
“I know.”
“You let seven months pass.”
“I know.”
Her eyes filled.
“Stop saying that.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say something that gives me back seven months.”
He had no answer.
That was the first honest thing between them.
Ernesto cleared his throat.
“Mrs. Montero, about the call.”
Alejandro turned.
“You are not firing her.”
Ernesto looked helpless.
“Sir, your mother owns forty-two percent of the management company that operates this property.”
Alejandro went still.
“What?”
“I thought you knew.”
“I did not.”
Ernesto rubbed his forehead.
“The investment vehicle is called Altura Hospitality Partners.”
Alejandro recognized the name.
Mateo had recommended that fund two years earlier.
Alejandro had signed an approval allowing a family trust to invest.
He had never read the final structure.
His mother had acquired influence without his attention.
Lucía watched realization spread across his face.
“This is what I meant.”
Alejandro looked at her.
“What documents were you collecting?”
Lucía remained silent.
“Lucía.”
She looked toward the security camera in the ceiling.
Then she leaned closer.
“The reason your mother wanted me gone had nothing to do with an affair.”
“What was it?”
“I found transfers from one of your construction companies to shell companies controlled by Mateo.”
Alejandro stared at her.
“How much?”
“At the time I found them?”
“Yes.”
“Eighty-four million pesos.”
His face went cold.
Lucía continued.
“That was seven months ago.”
Alejandro whispered.
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
A metallic sound came from the stairwell.
Someone had opened the door and closed it again.
Alejandro looked toward it.
No one appeared.
Lucía’s face changed.
“What?” he asked.
She stepped closer.
“We need to leave.”
Alejandro did not call his mother immediately.
That surprised Lucía.
It surprised him too.
For most of his life, Elena Montero had been the person he called when something became complicated.
She had survived his father's death.
She had protected the family company through lawsuits, strikes, and hostile takeovers.
She had been the steady voice that told him Lucía's disappearance was painful but not mysterious.
"Some women cannot carry the weight of this family," Elena had told him.
He remembered believing her.
Now he remembered something else.
His mother had never once asked whether Lucía might be in danger.
She had only asked when Alejandro planned to remove Lucía from the family trust documents.
At the time, he had thought it was practical.
Now it sounded monstrous.
Lucía leaned against the wall and pressed one hand beneath her belly.
Alejandro noticed immediately.
"Are you in pain?"
"No."
"You are holding your stomach."
"The baby moved."
His eyes dropped to her hand.
For a second, neither of them spoke.
He wanted to ask if he could touch her belly.
The thought felt absurdly intimate after seven months of silence.
He did not ask.
"Did my mother know you were pregnant?"
Lucía's jaw tightened.
"She was the second person I told."
Alejandro stared at her.
"Second?"
"You were supposed to be first."
His chest tightened.
"Supposed to be?"
Lucía looked away.
"I had a positive test the morning you flew to Monterrey."
He remembered the trip.
A factory acquisition.
Three days away.
When he returned, Lucía had seemed distracted.
He had spent twenty minutes with her before leaving again for a dinner his mother insisted he attend.
"Why didn't you tell me when I came home?"
Lucía laughed without humor.
"I tried."
That hurt more than an accusation.
"You took a call from Mateo in the middle of dinner."
Alejandro remembered.
Mateo had claimed there was an emergency with a financing agreement.
"You left the table."
"For forty minutes."
"Then your mother arrived."
Alejandro frowned.
"She came to the house?"
"You don't remember?"
He did not.
Lucía's expression turned bleak.
"Of course you don't."
That sentence contained the entire marriage he had neglected in ways he had never admitted.
Lucía continued.
"I told Elena because she found the pregnancy test box in the bathroom."
"What did she say?"
Lucía looked directly at him.
"She hugged me."
Alejandro almost exhaled.
Then he saw Lucía's eyes.
"And?"
"She told me a child would make me permanent."
His stomach dropped.
"Those were her exact words?"
"Yes."
"What happened next?"
"Two days later, your attorney's letter arrived."
Alejandro felt fury move through him with frightening calm.
Not explosive fury.
The colder kind.
The kind that made decisions.
He took out his phone again.
Lucía watched him.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking every authorization issued from my legal office that week."
"From your phone?"
"From my private server."
He entered a code no assistant knew.
The screen loaded.
Then it stopped.
ACCESS REVOKED.
Alejandro stared at the message.
His own private legal archive had locked him out.
Someone had changed his credentials within the last hour.
Which meant someone already knew he had found Lucía.
“Why?”
“Because the last time I told someone about those transfers, my apartment was broken into the same night.”
Alejandro turned toward Ernesto.
“Lock down this floor.”
Ernesto reached for his radio.
May you like
Before he could speak, every light in the corridor went out.
