Chapter 6 - The mistress who was supposed to replace me
Camila contacted me on the fourth day.
Not with an apology.
With a demand.
“I need to see you.”
“No.”
“Elena, Mateo is blaming me.”
“That sounds like a Mateo problem.”
“He says I destroyed everything.”
“You wore my bracelet to my hospital room.”
Silence.
“I know.”
“You touched my child while people were filming me.”
“I know.”
“You helped humiliate a woman one day after childbirth.”
“I know.”
At least she had stopped saying it was complicated.
Then:
“I didn’t know about the psychiatric room.”
That made me pause.
“How do you know there was one?”
“Estela told me yesterday.”
“Why?”
“She thinks I’m going to testify against them.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then call a lawyer.”
“I did.”
Good.
That was why I agreed to meet.
Camila came with independent counsel.
No Mateo.
No Estela.
She returned my bracelet first.
I did not put it on.
“What did Mateo tell you?” I asked.
“That your marriage was over.”
“Original.”
“That you hadn’t shared a room in a year.”
False.
“That you stayed only because you wanted the company.”
Also false.
“That he couldn’t divorce you because your father’s trust was holding Carranza hostage.”
Closer to his worldview.
Camila had worked as an events consultant for Carranza.
Mateo began the affair eight months earlier.
She admitted she liked the money.
The access.
The attention.
She also admitted she enjoyed winning against a wife she had never met.
Ugly.
At least honest.
Then she became pregnant.
I stared.
“You’re pregnant?”
She nodded.
Early.
Ten weeks.
My stomach went strangely quiet.
Mateo knew.
Estela knew.
That explained the bracelet.
Not merely mistress theater.
Replacement succession.
“Is Mateo the father?”
“I think so.”
That answer mattered.
“You think?”
Camila looked away.
“There was someone before him.”
“Who?”
She refused to name him initially.
Her lawyer encouraged caution.
Fine.
We did not need that yet.
“What did Estela promise you?”
Camila’s face hardened.
“A place in the family.”
“What does that mean?”
“She said once you signed and left, Mateo would marry me.”
“And the quadruplets?”
“She said they needed a mother.”
I felt something cold move through me.
“You thought that would be you?”
“I didn’t think about it enough.”
That was the most truthful thing she said.
Then she revealed why she had called.
The morning after the hospital confrontation, Mateo accused her of causing the failure because I only became suspicious after discovering hotel receipts.
Camila replied that Javier had said the timing was safe.
Mateo froze.
He did not know she spoke to Javier.
“How do you know him?” I asked.
“He introduced me to Mateo.”
There it was.
Again.
The affair was not necessarily manufactured.
But someone had placed opportunity deliberately.
Javier invited Camila to a Carranza charity gala.
Seated her near Mateo.
Later recommended her consulting firm.
Camila believed it was networking.
Maybe it was.
Maybe not.
Then she showed me a message from Javier.
Sent three weeks before my delivery:
Stay close to Mateo. Estela will handle Elena. Once the children arrive, family structure changes permanently.
I asked:
“Why would you follow that?”
“He told me Mateo was planning to leave me after the birth.”
“Were you frightened?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to help take another woman’s babies?”
She cried then.
I did not comfort her.
She had made choices.
But something else was becoming clear.
Javier had separately told everyone what would make them move.
Mateo: save the company.
Estela: preserve the bloodline.
Camila: secure her future.
Me: none of it.
I was the object to be removed.
Then Camila finally named the man she had been with before Mateo.
Not a stranger.
Gabriel Santos.
May you like
My CFO.
Cliffhanger: Camila’s pregnancy could belong to Gabriel—the same CFO helping Elena trace Aurora—placing him inside both the affair network and the company investigation.
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