“Are you insane? Mom barely knows what year it is. Now you’re going to interrogate me because she remembers some maid from twenty-five years ago?”
Valeria stands carefully beside Doña Carmen.
“My mother never talked about that house,” she says. “But sometimes at night, when she thought I was asleep, she would cry and say, ‘The lady tried to help us.’ I never knew what it meant.”
Doña Carmen begins shaking her head.
“I gave Rosa a letter,” she says. “I gave her proof.”
“Proof of what?” you ask.
Isabella steps back.
“Mateo, stop.”
But you don’t.
For once, you do not stop for her anger.
You move closer to your mother and lower your voice.
“Mom, what proof?”
Your mother looks at you with a kind of grief that makes you feel like a child again.
“Your father did not die the way they told you.”
The air leaves your lungs.
Your father, Alejandro, died eighteen years ago in what everyone called a heart attack. You were twenty-two. Isabella was nineteen. Your mother changed after that, becoming quieter, more obedient to lawyers, accountants, and family advisors who seemed to appear overnight.
You built the company afterward because someone had to.
You buried your grief under contracts and glass towers.
“What are you saying?” you whisper.
Doña Carmen grips your hand until her knuckles whiten.
“He was going to change the will,” she says. “He found out money was missing. He found out someone was selling company land through fake papers.”
Isabella’s face twists.
“That is a lie.”
Your mother doesn’t look at her.
“He trusted the wrong blood,” Doña Carmen continues. “He trusted his brother. He trusted the accountant. And he trusted Isabella because she was his little girl.”
You look at your sister.
For one second, she looks like the girl who once followed you around the garden with scraped knees and a pink ribbon in her hair.
Then the mask returns.
“You’re going to believe this?” she says. “You’re going to believe a sick old woman and a maid who showed up last week?”
Valeria steps forward.
“I didn’t show up for this.”
Isabella turns on her.
“No, you showed up for money.”
Valeria’s voice hardens.
“I showed up because your agency hired me. Because your mother needed care. Because unlike you, I know what it means to watch someone disappear piece by piece.”
That silences Isabella for half a breath.
Then Doña Carmen says the sentence that changes everything.
“Rosa saw Isabella put the drops in his drink.”
You feel your body go cold.
The whole mansion seems to stop breathing.
Isabella’s eyes flare with pure terror.
Then she laughs too loudly.
“Drops? Really? This is a soap opera now?”
Your mother begins to cry.
