After the Slap, Every Door in the Alcázar Mansion Began to Lock

“Are you taking us somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere your grandmother cannot enter without permission.”

Renata’s chin trembled, but she nodded.

Diego settled the overcoat around all three children. It was absurdly large, swallowing Emilia’s ivory lace sleeves and nearly covering Lucía’s pale-pink dress. Renata kept one hand outside it, gripping Mariana’s fingers.

Adrián stood.

Mariana looked back at Beatriz.

The older woman remained beneath the chandelier, one arm extended toward the guards who had refused her. Her certainty had not disappeared. It had cracked, and fear showed through the fracture, but anger was already gathering around it.

“You walk out that door,” Beatriz said, “you leave with nothing.”

Mariana touched her burning cheek.

For sixteen months, nothing had been the thing she feared most.

No money. No home. No access to the girls’ school. No family name to protect them. No husband to argue with his mother and then apologize afterward with coffee he made too strong. No evidence that the life she remembered had been real.

Lucía pressed her face against Mariana’s hip.

Mariana looked down at the three girls huddled in a stranger’s coat.

Then she stepped into the rain.

Adrián followed, positioning himself between the family and the ballroom as they crossed the reflective stone. Diego walked behind them. Water darkened Mariana’s cardigan within seconds and flattened loose strands of hair against her neck.

At the black car, Adrián opened the rear door. He held one hand above the frame so Lucía would not hit her head.

“All four of you,” he said, “are coming with me.”

Mariana stopped beside him.

The rain ran down his face and into his beard. His shirt clung to one shoulder. Behind him, the mansion glowed warm and gold, the way it had on the night Mariana first entered it as Javier’s fiancée. She had mistaken warmth for welcome then.

“I’m not yours to take,” she said.

Something almost like approval moved in Adrián’s eyes.

“No,” he replied. “You’re not.”

He waited.

Mariana put her daughters into the car and climbed in after them.

No one spoke until the mansion gates closed behind them.

Lucía began crying without sound. Tears slid down her face while she held a fistful of black wool beneath her chin. Emilia leaned against Renata, who sat rigidly beside the window. Mariana pulled all three close, though the movement hurt her shoulder and made her cheek pulse.

In the front seat, Diego spoke quietly into his earpiece. He gave no address, only turns and time estimates. Adrián sat opposite Mariana in the rear compartment, one knee angled to give the children space. The privacy partition remained open.

Mariana watched the city blur through rain-streaked glass.

“Where are we going?”

“A house in San Pedro.”

“Yours?”

“One of them.”

Renata looked at him. “How many houses do you have?”

Mariana expected him to ignore the question.

“Too many.”

“Why?”

“Because I made certain decisions badly.”

Renata considered that. “My father said people who have too many houses are avoiding one of them.”

Adrián’s gaze shifted to the window.

“That sounds like Javier.”

At the sound of her husband’s name, Mariana’s arms tightened around the girls.

“You knew him.”

“Yes.”

“How well?”

“Well enough to miss him. Not well enough to save him.”

The car hit a shallow channel of water. Lucía flinched at the spray against the undercarriage.

Mariana studied Adrián’s face. Men like him were supposed to lie smoothly. He had answered with a rough edge that seemed less polished than the rest of him.

“Did Beatriz ask you to come tonight?”

“She asked me to renew an arrangement.”

“What arrangement?”

“Security. Transportation. Problems she preferred not to describe in writing.”

“And you were going to agree?”

“I had not decided.”

“You sat at her table.”

“So did forty other people.”

“I was carrying their glasses.”

His eyes moved to the red mark on her cheek.

“Yes.”

The single word made her angrier than an excuse would have.

She turned away.

At the safe house, Diego entered first. The property stood behind a high limestone wall on a street where the trees were manicured and the security cameras were not hidden. The interior was expensive without being personal: pale furniture, abstract paintings, a kitchen no one had cooked in recently.

A woman named Teresa came from the back hall in slippers and a navy robe. She was in her fifties, with gray at her temples and the unimpressed expression of someone accustomed to Adrián arriving with emergencies.

“You brought children,” she said.

“I did.”

“Wet children.”

“Yes.”

“Very small wet children.”

Lucía stared at her.

Teresa sighed at Adrián. “You own towels. This is fortunate.”

The ordinary irritation in her voice broke something in Emilia. She gave a startled laugh, then clapped both hands over her mouth as if laughter were forbidden.

Teresa crouched. “There. At least one of you has sense.”

She led them upstairs.

Mariana remained near the front door. Water dripped from her skirt onto the stone floor. She wanted to follow her daughters, but her legs had begun to shake.

Adrián closed the door behind Diego.

“You need ice.”

“I need my phone.”