Chapter 5 - THE NIGHT OF THE BRUISES
The memory card contained an audio recording.
Mariana had hidden her phone inside her apron before entering the wine room.
At first, there was only static.
Then Rebeca’s voice filled the delivery suite.
“Tell me where you copied the records.”
Valeria answered.
“I didn’t copy anything.”
A sharp movement followed.
Not a blow.
The sound of furniture sliding.
Then Octavio spoke.
“You entered a restricted office.”
“It is my husband’s office.”
“It belongs to the company.”
“The ledger proves you stole from that company.”
Sebastián looked at Mateo.
Mateo’s expression hardened.
The recording continued.
Rebeca’s voice became colder.
“You have always confused marriage with ownership.”
“I’m not asking for anything.”
“You are carrying everything.”
Silence followed.
Then Valeria asked the question that revealed the truth.
“This is about the trust, isn’t it?”
Mariana paused the recording.
Sebastián looked at Valeria.
“You knew?”
“I discovered the trust document in the ledger.”
She took a difficult breath.
“Your father changed the terms shortly before he died.”
Sebastián’s father, Alejandro Alcázar, had died from a sudden heart attack four years earlier.
At the time, Sebastián had been told that the trust transferred control to Rebeca until Sebastián turned forty.
But the document inside the black folder proved otherwise.
Alejandro had transferred the voting shares to Sebastián’s first child.
Rebeca had never owned them.
She had only controlled the company because no child had yet been born.
Mateo restarted the audio.
Octavio demanded that Valeria sign a statement claiming she had stolen the ledger during a mental breakdown.
Valeria refused.
The guards held her in a chair.
Rebeca instructed someone to give her an injection.
Mariana’s voice could be heard protesting.
Then the recording became chaotic.
A glass shattered.
Valeria cried out.
The sound stopped thirty seconds later.
Mariana wiped her eyes.
“I pulled the emergency alarm.”
“The guards left to check the hallway.”
“I helped Valeria escape through the kitchen corridor.”
Sebastián looked at his wife’s bruises.
“Those marks came from being restrained.”
“Some of them,” Valeria said.
He heard the unspoken words.
There had been other incidents.
Other nights.
Other explanations he had accepted.
Mateo removed the memory card.
“This proves assault, unlawful confinement, and conspiracy.”
A federal agent entered the room.
“We searched Elevator B.”
“What did you find?” Mateo asked.
The agent placed a hospital transfer bracelet on the table.
It carried Valeria’s name.
But the destination was not Clínica Santa Aurelia.
It was a private airfield.
A chartered plane had been scheduled to leave for Switzerland at one in the morning.
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And one seat had already been reserved for a newborn baby.
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