Chapter 3 - The Sister Who Never Existed
Alejandro left the bathroom.
Mariana followed.
“Stop walking away from me.”
He stopped in the upstairs hallway.
Lucy remained inside with Dr. Carter, who had arrived and was beginning a neurological evaluation.
Mariana stood directly in front of her husband.
“You have a sister?”
Alejandro looked toward the floor.
“Had.”
“Name.”
“Isabella.”
Mariana had never heard it.
Not in fifteen years.
Not from Alejandro’s parents.
Not at family holidays.
Not in photographs.
Nothing.
“What happened to her?”
Alejandro’s voice dropped.
“She disappeared the same night your mother did.”
Mariana felt cold.
“How old?”
“Seventeen.”
“And you were?”
“Twenty.”
The timeline struck her.
Twenty years earlier.
Before Alejandro had wealth.
Before his construction empire.
Back when his father, Rafael Torres, controlled a modest demolition company on Chicago’s south side.
“What happened at that construction site?”
Alejandro sat on a hallway bench.
For the first time since Mariana had known him, he looked young.
Afraid.
“My father was demolishing an old textile warehouse.”
Mariana waited.
“Isabella found financial records she wasn’t supposed to see.”
“What records?”
“Payments.”
“To whom?”
“City inspectors. Union officials. People who signed off on buildings that should never have passed.”
Mariana stared.
“Your father was bribing inspectors.”
“Yes.”
“And my mother?”
“She worked for one of those inspectors.”
Mariana shook her head.
“My mother cleaned offices.”
“She cleaned the municipal engineering office.”
That was true.
Mariana remembered waiting there after school.
“She found copies.”
“Of what?”
“Inspection reports related to three buildings that later collapsed.”
Mariana’s stomach twisted.
She vaguely remembered the news.
A parking structure.
An apartment renovation.
A warehouse wall.
Five deaths.
Alejandro continued.
“Isabella wanted to expose my father. Elena agreed to help her.”
“So they met at the construction site.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Isabella hid the documents there.”
Mariana’s anger rose.
“What did you do?”
“I followed them.”
“Why?”
“My father told me Isabella was stealing from him.”
“And you believed him.”
“Yes.”
Mariana stared at Alejandro.
“What happened?”
He looked toward the closed bathroom door.
“When I arrived, there was an argument.”
“With your father?”
Alejandro shook his head.
“My father wasn’t there.”
“Then who?”
“A man named Victor Hale.”
Mariana frowned.
“Who was he?”
“My father’s attorney.”
Alejandro’s voice became strained.
“Hale tried to take the documents. Isabella ran. Elena tried to stop him.”
“What happened to my mother?”
“She fell.”
“From where?”
“A temporary platform.”
Mariana’s knees weakened.
“How far?”
“Two stories.”
“And you left her?”
“No.”
Lucy’s accusation echoed.
He left me there.
Alejandro rubbed both hands over his face.
“I went down to her. She was breathing. Isabella was gone. Hale was screaming that police were coming.”
“Then?”
“I panicked.”
Mariana could barely look at him.
“I called my father.”
“What did he say?”
Alejandro looked up.
“He told me to leave.”
“And you did.”
“Yes.”
“You left my mother injured on concrete.”
“Yes.”
Tears burned Mariana’s eyes.
“You married me knowing that?”
Alejandro whispered:
“I didn’t know who you were when we met.”
“But later?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Two weeks before our wedding.”
Mariana recoiled.
“And you still married me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because by then I loved you.”
Mariana laughed through tears.
“That is supposed to make this better?”
“No.”
Then Lucy screamed from inside the bathroom.
They rushed back.
Dr. Carter stood beside her.
Lucy was clutching her head.
“She remembered a name,” he said.
Mariana knelt.
“What name?”
Lucy looked directly at Alejandro.
“Isabella.”
Then she whispered:
“She didn’t run away.”
Alejandro froze.
May you like
Lucy’s next words shattered him.
“I watched your father put her in the truck.”
