Chapter 5 - THE PRICE OF MY SIGNATURE
The development company was called Iberia Urban Holdings.
They had been buying older homes across the neighborhood to build luxury apartments.
My parents had negotiated a price far above what I expected.
Six hundred and forty thousand euros.
There was only one problem.
They didn’t own the property.
So my father had created the solution himself.
My signature.
Forged.
Again.
Andrés obtained a copy of the proposed sale contract.
The signature looked almost perfect.
That frightened me more than a bad forgery would have.
My father had practiced.
“How many times has he done this?”
I asked.
Nobody answered.
Because nobody knew.
The sale was temporarily frozen once Andrés notified the company of the ownership dispute.
But the company’s attorney produced something unexpected.
A notarized power of attorney.
Supposedly signed by me.
It authorized my father to negotiate property matters on my behalf.
The date was four years earlier.
I was horrified.
Then Mateo noticed the address.
“Lucía.”
“What?”
“Look.”
The document said I had signed it in Madrid on October 17.
I knew that date.
Mateo knew it too.
We had gotten married on October 17.
In Valencia.
Two hundred miles away.
I stared at him.
“My father forged my signature on my wedding day?”
Mateo’s face turned cold.
Andrés nodded.
“And if we establish that, the document collapses.”
That afternoon, my mother came to the hospital.
Security stopped her downstairs.
She demanded to see me.
I said no.
She called seventeen times.
I answered the eighteenth.
“What do you want?”
Her voice was shaking with anger.
“You are humiliating this family.”
I almost couldn’t believe it.
“I’m in a hospital because you pulled me by the hair after surgery.”
“And somehow I’m humiliating you?”
“I barely touched you.”
“The doctors disagree.”
“You know I would never hurt you.”
I laughed.
It hurt my incision.
But I laughed anyway.
“You already did.”
“Lucía, your father made a mistake.”
“A mistake is forgetting an appointment.”
“He forged my signature.”
“He was trying to protect the family.”
“By stealing my house?”
Her voice softened.
That frightened me more than the shouting.
“Your father owes money.”
“How much?”
Silence.
“How much, Mom?”
“Almost three hundred thousand.”
I closed my eyes.
“To whom?”
“Different people.”
“What people?”
“Business people.”
I knew she was hiding something.
“And the house sale was supposed to pay them?”
“Yes.”
“Why did Noelia say I didn’t know who I was messing with?”
Another silence.
“Ask your sister.”
Then my mother said the sentence that finally showed me exactly where I stood.
“If you stop the sale, you could destroy your father.”
I looked down at Alba sleeping against me.
“No.”
“Dad destroyed Dad.”
I ended the call.
Two hours later, Mateo received an anonymous message.
There was no text.
Only a photograph.
It showed him leaving the hospital.
May you like
And beneath it were four words.
SIGN OR SHE PAYS.
