Chapter 4 - The room they prepared before my babies were born
I did not sleep that night.
Not because the quadruplets cried.
They were calmer than I was.
Sofia made tiny squeaking sounds.
Nicolás kept escaping one arm from his swaddle.
Emma slept with her mouth open.
Lucas frowned in his sleep as though already disappointed by management.
I watched them and tried to understand how people could plan around babies who had not even been born yet.
Lucía obtained the reservation records through counsel.
The room was booked under a generic postpartum stabilization code.
No patient name.
But the billing guarantor was listed as Carranza Family Services.
A company I had never heard of.
Not Carranza Medical Logistics.
Family Services.
Registered eighteen months earlier.
Manager:
Estela Carranza.
Now my mother-in-law had a company.
That was new.
Estela spent twenty years pretending business bored her.
She could discuss jewelry for hours and claim she did not understand interest rates.
Maybe that too was performance.
Carranza Family Services had paid deposits to:
private nurses,
a behavioral-health consultant,
a family-law firm,
and a child-care agency.
All before my delivery.
I stared at the dates.
Some went back five months.
This was not a reaction to finding me difficult.
This was infrastructure.
Yet there was something odd.
Most payments were modest.
Administrative.
Preparatory.
The one large payment—12 million pesos—went somewhere else.
Solano Reproductive Consulting.
I looked at Lucía.
“Reproductive?”
She frowned.
“Did you use fertility treatment?”
“Yes.”
After the second miscarriage, we worked with a reproductive endocrinologist.
Hormonal support.
Genetic screening.
No donor material.
No surrogacy.
We conceived the quadruplets after an unusually successful treatment cycle.
Solano was not my clinic.
I had never heard of it.
Lucía requested records.
They refused, citing privacy.
Appropriate.
So we followed money instead.
Carranza Family Services paid Solano twice.
Once six months before my pregnancy.
Again at twelve weeks gestation.
The second payment memo was:
continuity assurance.
No explanation.
I called my fertility specialist, Dr. Mina Park.
She had no relationship with Solano.
But when I mentioned the name, she paused.
“They provide reproductive legal coordination and genetic-consulting services.”
“For whom?”
“Usually complex family structures. Donor arrangements. Embryo disputes. International intended parents.”
My stomach tightened.
“We didn’t use any of that.”
“I know.”
Then Dr. Park did something I appreciated.
She did not speculate.
She offered to audit my clinic records with independent consent.
We did.
The embryo transfer records were normal.
My eggs.
Mateo’s documented sample.
Four embryos implanted over two procedures—two initially, then two after a protocol correction? Wait. No. That would not result in quadruplets at once if separate cycles. Better logic: fertility treatment with ovulation induction led to multiple gestation. Let's avoid embryo specifics. My treatment records showed controlled ovarian stimulation and insemination using Mateo's sample. Good.
No donor.
No clinic anomaly.
So why pay Solano?
Then Dr. Park found something outside the treatment file.
A request for genetic samples.
Made when I was fourteen weeks pregnant.
Requester:
Carranza Family Services.
Purpose:
prenatal lineage confirmation.
I had never consented.
Neither had Dr. Park.
The request was denied.
But someone had tried.
Lineage.
The word bothered me.
Estela had spent the baby shower saying:
Carranza heirs.
Carranza blood.
Maybe this was not about custody alone.
Maybe someone wanted proof of something before the babies arrived.
Then Lucía received Aurora Strategic Holdings’ corporate registry supplement.
The nominee beneficiary had changed recently.
The new beneficial-interest declaration was sealed—but the signing witness was someone I knew.
Gabriel Santos.
My CFO.
May you like
The man I had trusted with Carranza’s books.
Cliffhanger: The CFO Elena believed was helping protect her company had witnessed paperwork for the shell entity receiving millions from Mateo—raising the possibility that the financial betrayal reached inside her own side of the business.
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