PART 1
“Sir, don’t make any noise… if your wife hears you, your daughter won’t leave this house alive.”
Alejandro Mondragón stood frozen in the service entrance of his own mansion, holding a bouquet of white roses, his heart pounding as if it wanted to burst out of his chest.
Nobody knew he had returned.
He was supposedly still in Madrid, closing the biggest hotel deal of his life. Renata, his wife, had sent him sweet messages throughout the week: photos of drinks, elegant dinners, and their daughter Valentina smiling slightly at the camera. But something about that smile had hurt him.
So he changed his flight without notice.
He landed in Mexico City, took a regular taxi from the airport, and before arriving in Lomas de Chapultepec, stopped by a flower shop in Polanco. He bought the same white roses he had given Renata when he proposed.
He came to ask for forgiveness for so many trips, so many absences, so many times he thought that paying for schools, drivers and vacations was the same as being present.
But as he approached his house, he noticed something strange.
There was music.
Luxury cars filled the entrance.
Laughter, clinking glasses, and elegant voices filled the air. A party. At his house. A party no one had mentioned because everyone thought he was on the other side of the world.
Alejandro asked to be dropped off a block away. He walked slowly, entered through the service door, and as soon as he crossed the kitchen, Maricela, the employee who had worked for them for years, dropped a tray. The glasses shattered on the marble floor.
—Maricela, it’s me —he whispered.
But she ran towards him and covered his mouth with her hand.
—Be quiet, sir. Please. You have something to see before I go down to the living room.
Alejandro felt his blood run cold.
Maricela led him up the service stairs, away from the music and the expensive perfume of the guests. The second floor was dark. Too quiet for a house full of people.
They stopped in front of Valentina’s room.
The door was ajar.
—Don’t go in yet—Maricela said with tears in her eyes—. Look first.
Alejandro barely pushed the door open.
And his world shattered.
Sixteen-year-old Valentina sat on the floor, clutching her knees, crying silently. Around her lay two open suitcases, hastily folded clothes, her school backpack, her passport, and an envelope containing money.
On the bed there was a letter with the name Alejandro written on the front.
Valentina wore a long-sleeved sweater even though it was hot. Her face was swollen from crying so much. In her hand she clutched an old photograph of Alejandro carrying her when she was a child.
The roses slipped from her fingers.
—My daughter… why is she packing?
Maricela swallowed.
—Because they were going to take her away tonight, sir.
-Who is it?
From below came Renata’s laughter, bright, perfect, cruel.
Maricela replied almost voicelessly:
—His wife.
Alejandro looked at Valentina again. She picked up the letter from the bed and hugged it to her chest, as if it were the only thing she had left.
And then Alejandro understood that he had not returned to surprise his family.
He had returned just before losing her forever.
What I was about to discover in that letter was something no parent could imagine without feeling ashamed of having arrived so late…
Alejandro opened the door.
—Valentina.
Her daughter looked up and froze, as if she were seeing a ghost. Then she backed away in fear, kicking a suitcase.
-Dad?
-It’s me.
Then she ran to him and clung to his neck with such desperation that Alejandro almost fell to his knees. It wasn’t the happy embrace of a daughter seeing her father return. It was the embrace of someone who had been holding on for far too long.
“I thought you were in Spain,” she sobbed.
—I came back earlier.
—You shouldn’t have come back.
That phrase hurt him more than any blow.
Alejandro pulled her back just enough to look at her. Then he saw the red marks on her wrist. They weren’t scrapes. They were fingerprints.
“Who did this to you?”
Valentina lowered her gaze.
Maricela answered from the doorway:
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