Chương 2
“This matter is adjourned,” he said. “All temporary orders are stayed pending reassignment and review.”
Héctor’s attorney objected.
Rivas brought the gavel down again, weaker this time.
The sound made Mariana flinch.
Catalina saw it. Her expression tightened, but she did not reach for her again.
A cramp pulled across the bottom of Mariana’s stomach. She pressed both hands against it and waited. Her obstetrician had told her the practice contractions would feel like a tightening belt. This felt sharper, though it faded after several breaths.
Catalina noticed.
“Is it the baby?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I said I’m fine.”
Héctor moved around the table. “She gets those when she’s anxious.”
Mariana turned toward him.
He had said it with the familiar irritation of a husband correcting a stranger. For a moment the courtroom disappeared, and she was back in their kitchen three weeks earlier, holding the counter while a contraction passed, listening as Héctor told her she was making herself sick by refusing to be reasonable.
Catalina’s voice went cold.
“You will not diagnose her.”
Héctor straightened. “And you will not walk into our lives because you bought a genetic report.”
Mariana looked from him to Catalina.
The words landed more heavily than the accusations in the file.
“A genetic report?”
No one answered quickly enough.
Mariana’s gaze returned to Héctor. “How do you know about that?”
His attorney touched his arm. Héctor ignored him.
“I don’t. I’m guessing what this is.”
“No.” Mariana’s voice was barely audible. “You said a genetic report.”
Catalina closed her eyes for a moment.
Her lead lawyer stepped between them, not physically but with her tone. “Mrs. Luján, my name is Isabel Mendoza. We need to move you somewhere private. A physician can check you, and then we can explain what we have and what we do not yet know.”
“My name is Mariana Torres.”
Isabel nodded. “Mariana.”
Héctor gave a small, humorless laugh. “They rehearsed this.”
Mariana looked at him again. She had spent four years learning the slight changes in his face: the way one eyebrow rose when he believed someone was stupid, the way his mouth softened when he wanted forgiveness, the stillness that came over him when he was frightened but refused to show it.
He was frightened now.
Not of Catalina’s wealth. Not only that.
He was frightened that Mariana had noticed the genetic report.
The court administrators directed everyone into separate rooms. Héctor protested until his attorney pulled him aside. The security agents never touched him. They did not need to. Their stillness changed the space around him.
Mariana was led through a side corridor into a consultation room with a round table, six mismatched chairs, a water dispenser, and a framed notice about mediation. Catalina entered behind her with Isabel and another lawyer. The agents remained outside.
“I don’t want six lawyers,” Mariana said.
“Neither do I,” Catalina replied.
Isabel gave Catalina a warning look.
Catalina removed her white coat and folded it over the back of a chair. Underneath, she wore a charcoal dress with sleeves to her wrists. Without the coat, she looked smaller, though not less powerful.
A nurse from the courthouse medical office arrived with a blood pressure cuff. Mariana allowed the examination because the baby had gone quiet.
“Too much stress,” the nurse said after listening to the heartbeat. “But his heart rate is good.”
“His?” Catalina asked.
Mariana looked at her sharply.
The nurse glanced between them. “She told me in the hall.”
Catalina’s face softened. “A boy.”
“He isn’t yours.”
“No.” Catalina sat very still. “He is not.”
The answer unsettled Mariana. She had prepared herself for possession, not restraint.
The nurse advised her to call her obstetrician and left. The room became quiet except for the hum of the water dispenser and the faint noise of doors opening in the corridor.
Isabel placed a thin folder on the table.
“This is not the file we delivered to the judge,” she said. “This contains a report from a genealogy service, supporting civil records, and a preliminary analysis by an independent laboratory. It suggests that Doña Catalina is your biological mother. The probability is extremely high, but we need a new test with a documented chain of custody before anyone treats it as conclusive.”
Mariana did not touch the folder.
“I never gave her my blood.”
“No,” Catalina said. “You submitted a sample to a consumer ancestry company eleven months ago.”
Mariana’s mouth went dry.
She had ordered the kit after finding one of Rosa’s old documents with two different dates of birth. She had done it late at night, telling herself it was curiosity, not betrayal. The results had been disappointing: broad regional estimates, distant cousins, no parents. She had stopped checking the account.
“Héctor bought me the kit,” she said.
Catalina’s fingers tightened around one another.
Isabel continued carefully. “Three months ago, Doña Catalina uploaded her own data. The service generated a parent-child match. A notification was sent to both accounts.”
“I never received one.”
“We believe someone accessed your email and deleted it.”
Mariana stared at the unopened folder.
Across the table, Catalina’s ring caught the fluorescent light. It was old, heavy, set with a cloudy green stone surrounded by small diamonds. Mariana remembered Rosa turning a newspaper facedown when Catalina appeared in a photograph. At the time, she had assumed Rosa disliked rich people, which was generally true.
“How long have you known?” Mariana asked.
“Seventeen days,” Catalina said.
The direct answer hurt more than an excuse.
“You knew for seventeen days, and the first time you spoke to me was in a courtroom?”
“We were verifying the match.”
“You could have called.”
“I was advised not to.”
“By your six lawyers?”
“By investigators who believed your husband was monitoring your accounts.”
Mariana looked toward Isabel.
May you like
The lawyer did not soften it. “He was.”
Catalina leaned forward. “We found that Héctor had accessed the genealogy notification. Within two days, he contacted a retired civil registry employee connected to irregular files from the year you were born. He also began moving money through companies created with documents bearing your signature.”
