Chapter 10 - THE NIGHT BEFORE THE CRASH
Alejandro listened to the recording again.
And again.
Each time hurt more.
Mariana’s voice shook through the damaged speaker.
“I told her to leave.”
“She laughed.”
“She said Alejandro should have been hers.”
“She said she had waited long enough.”
A pause.
Then Mariana whispered.
“I’m going to tell Alejandro tomorrow.”
Alejandro closed his eyes.
Tomorrow never came.
He had spent four years believing Mariana died with no warning.
Now he knew she had been trying to reach him.
He checked his old calendar.
The day Mariana died, Alejandro had been in Guadalajara for a project meeting.
His flight home had been scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
Mariana crashed at 4:18.
Alejandro called Mateo.
“Come over.”
His brother arrived twenty minutes later.
Alejandro played the recording.
Mateo’s face went pale.
“Why didn’t she call you?”
“Maybe she tried.”
Alejandro searched Mariana’s phone records.
There it was.
Three outgoing calls to Alejandro.
All between 3:40 and 4:00 p.m.
He had received none of them.
“How?”
Mateo asked.
Alejandro remembered.
His phone had disappeared that afternoon.
One of the project assistants had found it hours later inside a conference room.
At the time, Alejandro assumed he had misplaced it.
“Someone took my phone.”
Mateo stared.
“Who was at the meeting?”
Alejandro pulled the old project roster.
Twenty-three names.
One jumped out.
Salazar Development Group.
Guillermo’s company.
Alejandro’s stomach turned.
“Guillermo had representatives there.”
Mateo leaned closer.
One representative had been Renata’s cousin.
The trap suddenly looked larger.
Not a jealous woman acting alone.
A family protecting her.
Maybe helping her.
Detective Sofía received everything.
By the end of the week, authorities obtained search warrants.
Guillermo’s offices were searched.
Renata’s apartment was searched.
Teresa’s property was searched.
Renata remained missing.
Then investigators found a locked safe inside Teresa’s home.
Inside were old photographs.
Letters.
Copies of Alejandro’s personal records.
And one handwritten journal belonging to Renata.
The earliest entry about Alejandro was dated ten years earlier.
Before he had ever met her.
She had written about seeing him speak at a conference.
About following his work.
About learning where he lived.
About finding out who his friends were.
Then Mariana appeared in the entries.
At first, Renata called her useful.
Then disloyal.
Then thief.
Then enemy.
Alejandro read only three pages before he had to stop.
This wasn’t love.
It was obsession.
A carefully constructed fantasy in which Alejandro had been assigned a role without ever knowing it.
And Mariana had been punished for disrupting the script.
Sofía closed the journal.
“We have enough to request additional warrants.”
“Not enough to charge her with Mariana’s death?”
“Not yet.”
Alejandro nodded.
“What do you need?”
“Something placing her directly at the crash.”
The answer arrived two days later.
A retired mechanic contacted police after seeing the story on television.
He remembered repairing Renata’s red car.
He remembered the damage.
And he remembered something else.
When Renata brought the car in, there had been blood on the passenger-side mirror.
The mechanic had asked what happened.
Renata told him she hit a deer.
But he had taken photographs for the insurance file.
Those photographs still existed.
One showed a strand of dark hair caught in the broken mirror.
Mariana had dark hair.
DNA testing began.
Alejandro waited.
Renata did not.
At 2:14 the next morning, his home security alarm went off.
Alejandro woke instantly.
A downstairs window had shattered.
Security rushed toward the back of the house.
Alejandro ran to Lucía’s room.
Her bed was empty.
His heart stopped.
“Lucía!”
Then a voice whispered from inside the closet.
“Daddy?”
He opened it.
Lucía was hiding beneath a blanket.
He pulled her into his arms.
“You did exactly right.”
“I heard glass.”
“I know.”
A guard shouted from downstairs.
They had caught someone.
Alejandro carried Lucía down only after police arrived.
The intruder was Paola.
Her face was bruised.
Her clothing was torn.
She wasn’t trying to attack them.
She had broken in because someone was chasing her.
“Renata found me.”
Paola was shaking uncontrollably.
“She knows I talked.”
Alejandro stared at her.
“Where is she?”
May you like
Paola looked up.
“I know where she’s hiding.”
