Chapter 12 - The Things She Saved
Nora stopped her before she reached the door.
“Laura. Stay where you are.”
“He’s destroying them.”
“We’ve reported what Valeria saw. Let the people handling it respond.”
“They’re mine.”
“I know.”
Laura stood in Elena’s hallway with her keys cutting into her palm.
For two years, any emergency had sent her running toward Marcos.
A sound from his room.
A dropped glass.
A call that he couldn’t get out of bed.
She knew how to act before she knew how to think.
Now she forced herself to put the keys down.
“What can I do?”
“Make a list of what those boxes contain.”
Laura sat at the kitchen table.
Client contracts.
Tax records.
Original sketches.
Employee files.
She wrote until the shaking in her hand slowed.
By morning, Nora had news.
The authorities had documented the materials at the villa as part of the expanding fraud investigation.
Some papers had been destroyed.
Others had been recovered.
The boxes were no longer available for Marcos to sort through.
Laura closed her eyes.
“Were there sketchbooks?”
“I don’t know yet.”
It embarrassed her that she cared about that.
After everything, she wanted the drawings.
The first restaurant she had redesigned.
The bookstore with the crooked front window.
A kitchen for a woman who had saved for eleven years.
Proof that she had existed before she became someone’s hands and legs.
Later, Daniel called.
He had followed the second bank account.
The missing studio proceeds had passed through a company Marcos controlled.
Some had paid old business debts.
Some had gone toward the villa.
Some had funded travel and luxury purchases.
“The therapy bills?” Laura asked.
“Some were real. Others appear to have been altered.”
“How much?”
“We’re still reconciling everything.”
She appreciated that he didn’t guess.
That afternoon, the accident report arrived.
The collision had occurred on a road miles away from Laura’s studio.
Marcos had been traveling in the opposite direction.
Laura read the location.
Then read it again.
All those nights.
All those apologies.
All that guilt.
There had never been a trip to pick her up.
Elena found her sitting on the floor beside the couch.
“Are you okay?”
Laura held out the report.
Her sister read it and sat beside her.
For a long time, neither spoke.
Then Laura’s phone lit up.
A voice message from Marcos.
She played it on speaker.
“If you keep pushing, you won’t get a dollar back.”
A pause.
May you like
Then his voice, lower.
“And you’ll never find out who helped me.”
