Chương 6
“Don’t perform humility. It doesn’t suit you.”
He set down the pen.
“Elena, I don’t know how to be here without doing something.”
“Try being her father.”
“I’m not sure she wants that.”
“She wanted it for years.”
His eyes moved toward the open bedroom door.
“I know.”
“No, Alexander. You know now. That’s different.”
He folded the corner of the legal pad until it formed a small triangle. He used to do that during difficult conversations, then tear the corners off and leave them in his pockets.
“I thought giving her space was respectful,” he said.
“You thought it protected you from hearing no.”
“That too.”
The answer took some of the fight from me.
The attorney arrived at noon. Her name was Maya Chen, and she wore running shoes with a gray suit because Alexander had called her while she was walking her dog. She did not seem impressed by his title, which recommended her immediately.
She asked us to wake Sofia only if Sofia wanted to speak.
“She needs representation before the husband’s family creates a record that harms her,” Alexander said.
Maya looked at him over the top of her glasses.
“Colonel, are you the client?”
“No.”
“Then you can make coffee.”
He made coffee.
Sofia came out twenty minutes later, moving slowly. She sat with Maya in the living room while Alexander and I remained in the kitchen. We could hear only pieces of the conversation.
“You control the goals.”
“No promises about outcomes.”
“Preserve everything.”
“Don’t respond publicly.”
At one point Sofia said, “I don’t want my father paying for this.”
Maya replied, “Then we’ll discuss fees with you.”
Alexander’s shoulders moved slightly. He kept his back to the room.
When Maya finished, she gave us four immediate tasks. The first was to request an emergency protective order. The second was to preserve medical records, messages, photographs, and the clothing. The third was to notify Sofia’s employer that she had experienced a medical emergency without giving unnecessary details. The fourth was to stop improvising.
She looked directly at Alexander when she said the last one.
A detective named Lila Grant called before Maya left. Her voice was low and unhurried. She asked Sofia to come to the station when she felt able, or she could conduct an interview at another location.
Sofia chose my apartment.
Detective Grant arrived with a colleague and a small audio recorder. She was in her early forties, with tired eyes and a wedding ring she rotated when listening. She asked Alexander to leave the room.
“I can assist with chronology,” he said.
“I’m sure you can,” she replied. “Leave the room.”
He went to the balcony.
Sofia’s interview lasted two hours. She stopped several times. Once, she forgot which woman had been holding which arm and began to panic because she thought the uncertainty made her unbelievable.
Detective Grant said, “Trauma is not a seating chart.”
Sofia looked at her.
“You’re allowed not to remember everything in order,” Grant continued. “Tell me what you do remember. Don’t improve it for me.”
Sofia described the lock turning. The folder on the table. Carmen removing her rings before the first slap and placing them beside the champagne bucket. A woman named Beatriz holding Sofia’s left wrist. Another woman, younger than the rest, standing near the mirror with a phone.
“Was she recording?” Grant asked.
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“Carmen told her to get my agreement.”
“Did she?”
“I never agreed.”
“Did the phone remain pointed at you?”
“Sometimes. She lowered it when they started hitting me.”
“What was her name?”
“Ana. Javier’s cousin.”
The detail changed Detective Grant’s posture. She wrote the name twice.
Sofia said Javier remained outside most of the time. Once, the door opened a few inches and Carmen spoke to him. Sofia could see the side of his face.
“What did he say?”
Sofia repeated the sentence about not hitting her face too much.
Her voice did not break this time.
Grant asked how she escaped.
The answer surprised all of us.
One of Carmen’s sisters began arguing that Sofia could not sign because her hand was swelling. Carmen ordered someone to bring ice. When the door opened, a hotel employee was standing in the hall with a tray meant for another room.
Sofia ran.
She did not remember deciding to run. She remembered the employee’s startled face, the silver lid on the tray, and one bread roll falling onto the carpet. She pushed past him, reached the elevator, then took the stairs because she heard women shouting behind her.
She descended six floors barefoot before finding an unlocked service corridor. A dishwasher smoking beside a loading door let her out after she said her husband was trying to hurt her.
“Did he call police?” Grant asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Blue apron. Gray beard. He had a tattoo of a bird on his hand.”
Grant noted it.
Sofia crossed the hotel loading area, hid behind a delivery truck, and begged a rideshare driver to take her without confirming the trip through an app. The driver refused at first. Then he saw her face and drove her to my building. She gave him the cash tucked into the lining of her bouquet bag.
“The bouquet bag?” I asked.
“I don’t know what it’s called.”
“That small satin purse?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“I left it in his car.”
Grant asked whether she knew the driver’s name.
“No.”
“What kind of car?”
“Dark. Maybe blue.”
Alexander made a sound from the balcony. I glared at him through the glass.
Grant did not promise they would find the driver. She did not promise the hotel would preserve every recording. She said officers were seeking warrants and had already requested that the room remain untouched, but hotel management had allowed Javier to remove personal luggage before police arrived.
Sofia went pale.
May you like
“My bag?”
“Security retained one handbag after the request came through. We don’t know whether anything was removed before that.”
