They say that your husband’s family becomes your own family the day you get married.
That blood calls to blood and that, at the end of the day, there is always a safe place for you at the Sunday table.
What a huge lie. What a cruel farce.
My name is Valeria. I am 28 years old and, until a couple of days ago, I was 34 weeks pregnant, a pregnancy I considered the most beautiful miracle of my life.
We were waiting for Mateo. My husband, Diego, and I had been trying to become parents for three years. We went to doctors, underwent tests, and spent entire nights crying in the darkness of our room when things didn’t go well.
That’s why, when I finally saw those two lines on the test, I felt like the whole world was falling into place. I took care of my belly like it was made of glass. I stopped drinking coffee, let Diego drive everywhere so I wouldn’t stress about city traffic, and stayed away from anything that might upset me.
But there was something I couldn’t get away from. Or rather, someone.
Diego’s family.
To put things in context, Diego comes from one of those very traditional Mexican families where the mother, Doña Leticia, is the absolute matriarch, and the eldest son, my brother-in-law Roberto, is the untouchable king.
Roberto is the kind of man who has never had to work hard for anything in his life. He’s 35 years old, still lives at his parents’ house, changes jobs every six months because “bosses don’t value his talent,” and always, always, has to be the center of attention.
From the day Diego introduced me to him at his house five years ago, I knew Roberto couldn’t stand me. I’m an accountant, I come from a humble, working-class family, and I’ve worked incredibly hard to have my own practice. Roberto resented my independence. He resented that I didn’t fawn over him like his mother and aunts did.
But I never imagined how far her resentment could go. Never, not even in my worst nightmares, did I think that the anger she felt towards me would put my baby’s life at risk.
It all happened this past Sunday.
It was unbearably hot. I’d felt tired since morning. My feet were swollen, my lower back ached, and Mateo wouldn’t stop kicking, as if he knew something was wrong and wanted to warn me.
“Diego, honestly, I don’t want to go to your mom’s today,” I said as I put on some comfortable shoes on the edge of the bed. “I feel really heavy, love. Besides, you know how things get with Roberto.”
Diego sighed, adjusting his shirt collar in front of the mirror. He’s a good man, he really is, but he has one huge flaw: he doesn’t know how to set boundaries with his family. He’s terrified of confronting his mother or his brother.
“Oh, Vale, don’t start,” she replied in a soft but pleading tone. “It’s Sunday lunch. My mom made pozole, and you know she gets offended if we don’t go. We’ll just go, eat, put up with Roberto for a while, and come back early so you can rest. I promise.”
I trusted him. That’s the worst part of all this. I trusted my husband to protect me if things got bad.
We arrived at Doña Leticia’s house around three in the afternoon. From the moment we entered, the smell of corn, guajillo chili, and pork filled the living room. There was noise: cousins running around, uncles drinking beer in the patio, and in the center of the dining room, the enormous, heavy mahogany table that Doña Leticia showed off as if it were a museum relic.
I greeted everyone out of politeness. When I got to the kitchen, Doña Leticia gave me a cold hug, one of those that barely touches your back.
“You already look very fat, my dear,” my mother-in-law said to me while stirring the pozole pot, without looking me in the eye. “You’d better go on a diet after the baby is born, because husbands will take notice if a woman lets her guard down.”
I bit my tongue. I felt the burning in my throat, but I took a deep breath. I did it for Diego and I did it for the peace of Sunday.
I went to sit in the dining room. Diego was in the patio helping to get some ice out. I took my place in one of the heavy chairs, trying to accommodate my enormous eight-month belly.
Then Roberto came in.
She came in with a glass of tequila in her hand, laughing about something she’d said on the phone to who knows who. When she saw me sitting there, her smile vanished immediately.
“Ah, the princess has arrived,” he said, slurring his words. He was already half drunk and we were just about to eat.
“Hi, Roberto,” I replied curtly, without taking my eyes off my cell phone.
He sat down right in the chair next to me. Too close. I felt his heavy gaze on me, scrutinizing me from head to toe with a disgust he didn’t even try to hide.
Throughout the meal, the atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Every time I spoke or tried to join the conversation, Roberto interrupted me. If I mentioned we were thinking of painting the baby’s room aqua green, he would scoff, saying it was the color of a cheap hospital. If Diego mentioned how much I was working, Roberto would burst out laughing and say that my clients were probably staying out of pity for me, seeing me so “bloated.”
Diego just kept saying, “Okay, dude, calm down,” but in such a quiet voice that Roberto didn’t even register it.
The clock struck five in the afternoon. I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain in my back was sharp, and my brother-in-law’s attitude had me on the verge of tears out of sheer anger.
—Diego, we’re leaving now, please— I whispered to my husband under the table.
Diego nodded, visibly uncomfortable, and got up to go to the bathroom before we said goodbye.
It was at that moment, when Diego disappeared down the hallway, that everything spiraled out of control.
I was sitting, trying to get comfortable enough to stand up. The chair was very heavy, and I couldn’t push it back easily because of my belly. My hands were resting on the thick edge of the wooden table, straining to pull myself to my feet.
Roberto, who was still sitting next to me, turned abruptly towards me. His eyes were bloodshot.
“You think you’re so tough, don’t you?” he hissed under his breath, so his mother, who was clearing dishes on the other side of the dining room, wouldn’t hear him so clearly. “You come here, to my house, to play the victim and separate my brother from us.”
“Roberto, I’m tired, I’m not going to fight with you,” I said, trying to ignore him and making a greater effort to get up.
I was already halfway to standing up. My belly was only a couple of centimeters from the edge of the mahogany table.
And then, he did it.
Roberto stood up abruptly, pretending to reach for a bottle of salsa on the other side of the table. As he did so, he deliberately turned his body and gave me a brutal, sharp shove with his hip and right arm.
It wasn’t a graze. It wasn’t an accident. It was a direct hit, fueled by all the rage he felt towards me.
I felt the impact immediately. The force pushed me forward. My eight-month pregnant belly slammed with a dull, violent, and terrifying thud against the thick wooden edge of the table.
A strangled scream escaped my throat. Pain shot through my abdomen like a red-hot knife.
But that wasn’t all. Because of the bounce and the lack of balance, my legs gave way. I fell backward. The chair slipped, and I went straight back onto the hard tile floor of the house.
The blow to my hip and back echoed in the dining room.
I lay on the floor, paralyzed by the pain. My first reaction, my only instinct, was to clutch my stomach. I was gasping, my eyes wide open, trying to process what had just happened. I felt a terrible cramp shoot from my belly button down to my lower back. “My baby… Oh my God, my baby,” was all I could think.
I expected cries for help. I expected someone to rush to my aid. I expected to hear Doña Leticia calling for an ambulance.
But what I heard chilled my blood.
Laughter.
Doña Leticia was standing a couple of meters away with the dirty dishes in her hand. She was laughing. A low, mocking laugh.
“Oh, Valeria, you’re awful,” my mother-in-law said, shaking her head. “You’re like a ball, you fall over at the slightest thing. You’re so scandalous.”
I turned my head up from the ground, my vision blurred by the tears of pain that were already beginning to flow. I saw Roberto standing next to me. He had a smug smile on his face. He was looking down at us, as if I were trash.
“Oh, sorry, ‘little princess,'” Roberto said, raising his hands with a cynicism that made my stomach churn. “I didn’t even touch you, don’t be so dramatic. You tripped because you’re so fat. Now get up, don’t make a scene here.”
A couple of guys in the room, who had seen the scene from afar, burst out laughing. “It’s just that it’s lost its center of gravity,” one of them said.
I couldn’t move. The pain in my abdomen was intense, throbbing. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The humiliation of lying on the floor of that house, pregnant, while my husband’s family laughed at me, was a psychological torture I will never be able to erase from my mind.
That’s when I heard Diego’s hurried footsteps returning from the hallway.
“Valeria!” she shouted, running towards me, her face pale when she saw me on the ground. “What happened? What did they do to you?”
“She fell all by herself, son,” Doña Leticia said quickly in an innocent tone. “You know how clumsy she is with her belly. Roberto was just going to grab the salsa and she got scared and fell backward.”
Diego knelt beside me, trying to help me sit up. I grabbed his shirt with desperate force. I was trembling.
“He pushed me, Diego…” I cried, my voice breaking with physical pain and helplessness. “He pushed me against the table. It hurts so much.”
Roberto snorted, rolling his eyes.
—No way, Diego, your wife is crazy. I didn’t even touch her. She’s already making things up to get attention.
Diego looked at me, then at his brother, and then at his mother. I saw the doubt in his eyes. I saw how his fear for his family weighed more than my words. And that broke me inside more than the blow.
As Diego tried to help me slowly stand up, a strange and heavy silence suddenly invaded the room.
Everyone stopped laughing.
I was crying on Diego’s shoulder, still on the floor half-up, when I realized that Doña Leticia and Roberto’s eyes were no longer on me.
They were nailed to the floor. Specifically, under the chair where Roberto had been sitting.
“Boster”, the family dog, a rescued stray dog who was always hanging around looking for food, had gotten under my brother-in-law’s chair.
We heard the dog scratching something. It was making noises with its snout.
“Get out of there, you stupid dog!” Roberto suddenly shouted, his voice high-pitched, filled with real panic. A panic that had nothing to do with my fall.
He made a move to kick the dog, but Boster was faster. He came out from under the chair and walked to the center of the dining room, right in front of where Diego and I were kneeling.
The dog dropped something from its mouth onto the tiles.
It made a metallic and plastic sound as it hit the floor.
Doña Leticia let out a strangled gasp and covered her mouth with her hands. Roberto’s eyes widened, and his face went from red to a ghostly white in less than a second. All the arrogance he had possessed a moment ago vanished completely.
Diego looked down at the object that the dog had just taken out of the backpack that Roberto had hidden under his chair.
I saw it too. And in the midst of my pain, my tears, and my fear for my baby, I suddenly understood why they hated me so much.
That object explained absolutely everything.
CHAPTER 2
The metallic sound of the object hitting the dining room tiles created an echo that seemed deafening to me.
At that moment, the sharp pain in my stomach and the burning in my lower back faded into the background. The atmosphere in the house changed so drastically that the air felt heavy, difficult to breathe.
Boster the dog let out a small growl, wagged his tail nervously and backed away, scared by the scream my mother-in-law had just given.
There, in the middle of us all, was a small, dark canvas bag, the kind used to store money in banks, but it was old and worn. When it fell to the floor, the zipper, which was half-open, gave way from the impact, spilling its contents onto the ground.
A wad of banknotes, tied with a thick rubber band, shot out and stopped a few centimeters from Diego’s knee.
But it wasn’t the money that made my blood run cold.
Along with the banknotes, several folded papers fell out, a black synthetic leather notebook and, most disturbing of all, a photograph of me.
It was a photo I had in my living room. A photo from my wedding to Diego, where I was smiling in my white dress. But the photo had been altered. My face had scratches made with a black marker, and right on my stomach, someone had stuck a thick pin, one of those used for sewing heavy fabric.
Next to the photo, there was a small broken glass jar, from which a dark powder was spilling out that smelled of damp earth and somewhat rancid, like spoiled meat.
I was on the floor, gasping in pain, but my accountant’s mind, my woman’s instinct, and my mother’s heart connected the dots in a millisecond.
Witchcraft. And something more.
Diego stared at the objects on the floor with a slightly tense posture, his eyes blinking rapidly, as if his brain could not process the image in front of him.
“Don’t touch it!” Roberto shouted, breaking the silence. His voice no longer had that arrogant, mocking tone from a few minutes ago. It sounded high-pitched and desperate.
My brother-in-law lunged forward, trying to bend down to pick things up, but Diego reacted instinctively. With a swift movement, my husband shoved his brother in the chest, forcing him back.
“Get out of the way, you bastard!” Diego shouted at him, with a fury in his voice that I had never heard from him in the five years we had been together.
Diego knelt down completely on the floor and extended his hand somewhat hesitantly. His fingers trembled as he picked up the altered photograph.
The silence in the dining room was absolute. The uncles who had been laughing earlier now stood in the corner of the room, not daring to say a word. Doña Leticia had both hands on her chest, breathing heavily.
“Diego, son, don’t pay any attention to that rubbish…” my mother-in-law began, her voice trembling, taking a step towards us. “It’s just Roberto’s nonsense, you know how superstitious he is. Give it to me, I’ll throw it in the trash.”
But Diego didn’t hear her. His gaze was fixed on the photograph. The pin piercing my belly. My belly, where his son Mateo was.
Slowly, Diego looked up at his brother. His face was red with anger and confusion.
“What is this, Roberto?” Diego asked, his tone dangerously low and calm. “I’m asking you a question. What the hell is this?”
Roberto swallowed hard. He looked at his mother, seeking help, hoping she would save him as she always did.
“No way, Diego, it’s a joke…” Roberto stammered, rubbing his hands against his jeans. “Some dude at the market gave it to me, told me it was for good luck, I didn’t even know what was inside.”
“Don’t be a liar!” I shouted from the floor, propping myself up on my elbow, ignoring the sharp pain that shot through my hip as I moved. “That photo was in our house, Diego. On the hall table. It disappeared two weeks ago, the day your mother and Roberto came to ‘visit’ us while you were at work.”
Diego looked at me, and I saw his eyes fill with tears of anger. He remembered that day. He remembered me telling him I couldn’t find the photo, and him saying I must have put it in a drawer by accident.
Without saying another word, Diego put the photo on the floor and grabbed the black notebook that had also fallen out of the bag.
“Diego, let go of that, damn it!” Roberto tried to approach again, this time raising his fists, but one of his uncles, Uncle Arturo, quickly approached and grabbed him by the arm.
“Leave it, Roberto,” Uncle Arturo said firmly. “Let your brother see what you’ve got there.”
Diego opened the notebook. I watched him from the floor, feeling my heart pounding in my throat.
At first, Diego’s expression was one of pure confusion. He flipped through the pages quickly. Then, he stopped. His eyes began to read something on the page. His face lost all color.
—This… this can’t be true—Diego whispered.
“What is it, love?” I asked, feeling a cold sweat run down my forehead.
Diego looked up from his notebook. His eyes were wide open, filled with such deep disappointment that it broke my heart.
“These are my accounts,” Diego said, his voice breaking. “They’re the bank statements for the savings account I opened for Mateo’s birth.”
Doña Leticia let out a sharp groan and slumped into one of the dining room chairs. She began to cry, a loud and scandalous cry, the kind meant to elicit pity and divert attention.
“Oh my God, what a misfortune! They’re going to separate us, this is the devil who entered my house!” my mother-in-law shouted, rocking back and forth.
Diego got up from the floor, notebook in one hand and folded bank statements in the other. He walked straight toward Roberto, who was trying to break free from his uncle’s grip.
“You have the passwords,” Diego said, shoving the papers in his face. “You have a record of every damn withdrawal. Fifty thousand pesos in January. Thirty thousand in February. Eighty thousand last month.”
I was breathless. That was the hospital bill. It was the money Diego had been saving for three years—working overtime, not buying clothes, bringing lunch in Tupperware to work—to make sure I could give birth in a good private hospital and that we wouldn’t lack anything.
“I’m your older brother, dude…” Roberto replied, trying to maintain a defensive stance, although his voice was trembling. “I needed money for a business, I was going to pay you back. Mom said to lend it to me.”
Diego turned his head sharply towards his mother.
“Did you give her my security token?” Diego shouted at Doña Leticia. “Did you give her access to the account I opened with my fingerprint? I left it with you to keep safe because you told me Valeria could lose it at my house!”
My accountant’s mind started working at full speed, despite the physical pain. Doña Leticia had insisted weeks before that pregnant women become forgetful, and that it was best if she kept Diego’s important documents in her safe. Diego, trusting blindly in “his saintly mother,” handed her the bank’s security device.
“Son, understand…” Doña Leticia whimpered, wiping her fake tears with a handkerchief. “Your brother had debts. Very bad people were after him. You have a good job, you earn a good living. Valeria has her own office, she’s always bragging about how much money she has. You two were going to get that money back quickly. Your brother needed it more.”
The coldness of my mother-in-law’s words disgusted me. They had stolen our son’s money. All of it. And they didn’t even feel guilty.
“But why the photo?” Diego asked, his voice sounding empty, as if he were losing faith in everything he knew. “Why the pin in Valeria’s stomach? What does that have to do with the stolen money?”
Roberto lowered his gaze. Silence settled once more in the room.
I felt another cramp in my stomach. Stronger than the first. I curled up on the floor, letting out a groan I couldn’t hold back.
“Valeria!” Diego turned towards me, dropping the papers to approach, but I raised my hand, asking him to stop.
“Let him answer you, Diego,” I said, gritting my teeth, enduring the pain. “Let him tell you to your face why he hates me so much.”
Diego looked at his brother again.
—Speak. Now.
Roberto lifted his chin. His defensiveness returned with a vengeance. As if being exposed had lifted the weight of his lies, allowing him to reveal his true self. A face filled with envy and hatred.
“Because your little wife is very clever, Diego,” Roberto spat, looking at me with deep contempt. “For the past month, she’s been talking about wanting to review the savings to prepare the hospital budget. She started telling you that she was going to manage the accounts, that it would be better to move the money to an investment fund.”
I swallowed hard. It was true. I had told Diego that money in a traditional savings account didn’t generate returns, that I, as an accountant, could invest it in a safe short-term fund before Mateo was born.
“If your stupid wife checked the accounts, she’d realize money was missing,” Roberto continued, without a trace of remorse. “And she’d turn you against me. She’d convince you to put me in jail. I told Mom we had to stop her.”
Diego took a step back, stumbling slightly over his own feet.
“Stop her?” Diego repeated, incredulous. “Is that why the witchcraft? To scare her?”
Roberto let out a dry, humorless laugh.
“The witchcraft was my mother’s idea,” Roberto said, pointing at Doña Leticia, whose eyes widened in horror at her favorite son’s betrayal. “She went to the cleansing woman at the market. She paid her five thousand pesos from your own account to do a ‘little job’ on Valeria. She wanted her to get sick. To have complications with the pregnancy, so she’d have to be on complete bed rest, stop working, and forget about going around checking accounts.”
I felt like the world was spinning around me.
My mother-in-law. The woman who served me lunch on Sundays and called me “daughter.” The woman who gave me hand-knitted blankets. I had paid with my own son’s money to have someone harm me during my pregnancy.
“And since that powder and photo nonsense wasn’t working…” Roberto pointed down at me, his eyes cold and calculating. “Mom told me I had to scare her. I had to make her really stressed or have a minor ‘accident.’ Nothing serious, just so they’d send her to the hospital early and, with the emergency expenses, you’d forget about the money on the bill.”
The push.
The bang against the table.
My mother-in-law’s laughter.
It was all planned.
It wasn’t a drunken outburst from my brother-in-law. It was a calculated, cold, and ruthless act to induce a miscarriage or premature birth, all to cover up a robbery.
A cry of pain and fury erupted from Diego’s chest. It wasn’t a human sound. It was the roar of a father who had just been told that his own family had tried to kill his unborn child for money.
Diego lunged at Roberto.
There were no words, no warnings. Diego grabbed his older brother by the collar and slammed him against the dining room wall with brutal force. Framed family photos crashed to the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces.
“I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch!” Diego yelled, punching him in the face. Roberto tried to defend himself, but Diego was blinded by rage. “Don’t you touch my wife or my son!”
The uncles rushed to separate them. There was shouting and shoving. Doña Leticia threw herself to the ground, grabbing Diego by the legs, crying loudly, begging for the life of her “poor Roberto”.
The house was in absolute chaos. Broken glasses, food scattered about, curses flying through the air.
I was on the ground, in the middle of the hurricane, watching as the family I thought I knew crumbled before my eyes.
And then, I felt something that pulled me out of the emotional shock and brought me back abruptly to physical reality.
A warm liquid.
I felt wetness between my legs. Very wet. Soaking my maternity pants, trickling down my thighs, and staining the white tiles of Doña Leticia’s dining room.
It wasn’t water. It wasn’t like my water had broken in the normal way.
I lowered my gaze, trembling from head to toe.
It was blood.
A dark red puddle was beginning to form beneath me. The impact against the edge of the mahogany table hadn’t just startled me. It had caused real damage. Deep damage.
The pain in my abdomen stopped being a cramp and became a continuous, brutal contraction that completely took my breath away. I felt like I was being ripped in two from the inside.
I tried to scream, to call for Diego, but I had no voice. Fear had paralyzed my throat.
I raised a trembling hand, stained with my own blood, towards the wall where Diego was still fighting.
—Di… Diego… —I managed to murmur, in a thread of a voice.
Nobody heard me. The noise of Doña Leticia’s screams and the uncles’ insults drowned out any other sound.
My vision began to blur. I felt a ringing in my ears, like television static. I closed my eyes tightly, hugging my large, bloody belly, begging God, life, the universe, that Mateo’s heartbeat would continue.
“Hold on, my love, hold on,” I pleaded in my mind to my baby, feeling another wave of pain snatch away my consciousness.
The last image I saw before everything went dark was Diego turning his head towards me, his face full of fury instantly transforming into a mask of absolute terror upon seeing the red pool in which I was floating.
Then, I only heard her desperate scream tearing through the air, calling my name, before the whole world went dark.
CHAPTER 3
Darkness.
At first, there was only a dense, heavy darkness and a silence that buzzed in my ears. It was like being underwater, where sounds don’t reach you clearly and your own body feels alien.
But that peace didn’t last long. Pain abruptly pulled me out of that emptiness.
I woke with a jolt, gasping for air as if I were drowning. The first thing I felt was movement. A sudden, rapid movement, accompanied by the deafening sound of a siren drilling into my head.
I was in an ambulance.
I opened my eyes with difficulty. The cold, white light from inside the vehicle hurt my eyes. Everything was spinning. Around me, two paramedics were working at full speed. One was putting an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, while the other was inserting an IV into my arm.
“Mrs. Valeria, can you hear me?” The paramedic’s voice sounded distant, but urgent. “Try to stay awake. I need you to look me in the eyes.”
I tried to speak, but the mask was in the way, and my throat burned. The pain in my abdomen was indescribable. It wasn’t just a stomachache. It felt like my organs were being crushed and torn apart at the same time. Every time the ambulance hit a bump in the road, a burning sensation shot through me from my navel down my spine.
Then I felt it again. The wetness. The warm liquid trickling down my legs.
Panic completely overwhelmed me.
“My baby…” I managed to stammer under the mask, raising a trembling hand to touch my belly.
The paramedic grabbed my hand firmly but carefully.
—Don’t worry, ma’am. We’re doing everything we can. We’re almost at the hospital. Your husband is coming with us.
I slowly turned my head to the left. There was Diego.
I had never seen him like that in my life. His shirt, the same clean shirt he had put on a couple of hours earlier in front of the mirror in our house, was stained with my blood. His hands were on his head, clutching his hair desperately. He was crying silently, his eyes swollen and his gaze vacant.
When he saw me looking at him, he immediately came over and took my hand in his. His hands were ice cold and trembled uncontrollably.
“I’m here, Vale. I’m here, my love,” she said, her voice breaking, trying to be strong for me. “We’re almost there. Everything’s going to be alright, I swear. Mateo’s going to be okay.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to cling to his words with all my heart, but the physical pain was so overwhelming that it was stealing my hope. I closed my eyes, praying with all my might. “My God, take me if you will, make me go through all this pain, but save my son. Don’t let them take him from me.”
The ambulance’s screeching brakes made me open my eyes again. The back doors flew open, letting in the noise of traffic, people shouting, and the streetlights.
What followed was a blurry chaos.
They rushed me down on the stretcher. The wheels bounced against the pavement until we went through the automatic emergency room doors of the hospital.
“Abdominal trauma in a 34-week pregnant woman!” one of the paramedics shouted as we ran down the white corridors. “Active bleeding! Code red, we need the operating room ready!”
The ceiling lights flashed overhead like camera flashes. Doctors’ voices, nurses running past us.
“Sir, you can’t go any further!” I heard a security guard yell at Diego.
“She’s my wife! She’s my son!” Diego shouted, with a desperation that broke my heart.
“Diego!” I shouted, trying to get up, taking off my oxygen mask, but a nurse gently laid me back down.
“Sir, we’ll see to you, but you have to stay in the waiting room. You can’t go into the trauma area,” a doctor explained quickly.
I watched as Diego lagged behind, clinging to the double doors that were closing between us. His anguished face is the most painful image I have etched in my memory of that day.
They took me into a room lit by blinding surgical lights. Within seconds, there were five or six people around me. I felt cold scissors cutting my maternity pants and blouse. They were undressing me so they could examine me.
I felt no shame. I felt no embarrassment. I only felt a pure and primal fear.
A doctor approached my face. She had a very serious expression, the kind that doesn’t bring good news.
—Valeria, this is Dr. Martinez. You suffered a very hard blow to your abdomen. We’re going to perform an emergency ultrasound to check on the baby and see where the bleeding is coming from. I need you to stay as still as possible, okay?
I nodded, breathing in short, ragged breaths.
They felt the cold gel on my belly. Despite the pain of my injured skin, I gritted my teeth to keep from moving. The doctor passed the transducer over my abdomen.
The silence in the room was unbearable. The nurses kept preparing IV lines and drawing blood, but no one spoke as they looked at the ultrasound monitor.
I turned my neck to try to see the screen, but I couldn’t understand anything. I only saw gray and black spots.
“Is he alive?” I asked, my voice muffled and filled with tears. “Please tell me he has a heartbeat.”
The doctor didn’t look me in the eye right away. She kept moving the device, frowning. Those five seconds it took her to answer me felt like the longest of my life.
Suddenly, the sound filled the room.
Thump-thump-thump-thump. It was Mateo’s heartbeat. He was alive. I let out a stifled sob, feeling a small part of my soul return to my body.
But the relief didn’t last long.
“The baby has a heartbeat, Valeria, but he’s suffering,” said Dr. Martinez, her tone of voice filled with urgency. “The heart rate is slowing. You have a placental abruption caused by the impact of the blow. The placenta is separating from the uterus, which is why the bleeding is so heavy.”
The doctor looked me straight in the eyes. There was no time to be delicate.
“The baby is running out of oxygen and you’re losing a lot of blood. We need to perform an emergency C-section right now. We can’t wait another minute or both of you will be at very high risk. Do you understand?”
Fear overwhelmed me, but my response was automatic.
“Take him out,” I said, crying, clutching the sheets of the stretcher with my hands. “Take him out, please, save my baby. I don’t care what happens to me.”
From then on, everything moved at breakneck speed.
They handed me some papers to sign with a trembling hand. They moved me to a different stretcher and rushed me to the operating room.
The operating room was terribly cold. I felt myself trembling uncontrollably; I don’t know if it was from the temperature, the blood loss, or simply the terror I felt.
An anesthesiologist approached my head.
—Valeria, due to the urgency and the risk of continued bleeding, we don’t have time for a regular epidural. We’re going to give you general anesthesia. You’ll be completely asleep, and when you wake up, your baby will already be born.
I wanted to be awake. I wanted to hear Mateo’s first cry. It was something Diego and I had dreamed about for months. We had planned to play relaxing music, for Diego to cut the umbilical cord, and for them to place him on my chest as soon as he was born.
And now, all of that had been stolen from me. Roberto had stolen it from me. Leticia had stolen it from me.
There was no music. Diego wasn’t going to be holding my hand. Just cold lights, scalpels, and blood.
“Count down from ten, Valeria,” the anesthesiologist told me, placing the mask over my face. The gas had a sweet, artificial smell.
“Ten…” I murmured, feeling my eyelids grow heavy as lead. “Nine… Save Mateo… Eight…”
The last tear slid down my cheek before the darkness, this time total and deep, swallowed me completely.
I don’t know how much time passed.
When I began to regain consciousness, the pain in my abdomen had changed. It was no longer the burning, violent contraction from the blow. Now it was a different kind of pain, a deep, medicated, tight ache, accompanied by a heaviness throughout my body.
I could hear the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor near my head. Beep… beep… beep…
My throat felt dry and rough, like I’d swallowed sand. I tried to move my right hand and felt a plastic tube taped to my skin.
Slowly, I opened my eyes.
I was in a recovery room. The lights were dim. There was no more siren or doctors shouting. Only a heavy silence, broken only by the sound of the machines I was connected to.
I turned my head to my left with great effort.
There was Diego.
He was sitting in a blue plastic chair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, face hidden in his hands. He was no longer wearing the blood-stained shirt. He was wearing a T-shirt that I suppose he bought at some convenience store near the hospital. He looked exhausted, as if he had aged ten years in just a few hours.
I moved my fingers to touch his arm. I barely had the strength to brush against it.
Diego immediately raised his head.
Her eyes were red and bloodshot, surrounded by deep, dark circles. Seeing that I was awake, she jumped up and came to the bed, taking my hand as gently as if it were made of paper.
“Okay…” her voice was a hoarse whisper. “You’re awake. My love, you’re awake.”
He stroked my sweaty hair and kissed my forehead. His lips were trembling.
My maternal instinct was faster than my own conscience. My left hand traveled clumsily to my stomach.
It was flat. There was no belly anymore. There was no baby inside.
The terror hit me so hard that the heart monitor started beeping faster.
—Diego… —my voice sounded like a painful scratch in my dry throat—. Mateo… Where is he? What happened to my baby?
Diego closed his eyes for a second and swallowed. I saw his eyes fill with fresh tears.
That second of silence was the most terrifying moment of my entire life. I thought the worst. I thought we had lost him. I thought all the effort, the pain, and the love hadn’t been enough.
“He’s alive, Vale,” Diego said quickly when he saw my terrified expression. “Mateo is alive.”
I let out such a huge sigh that my C-section incision hurt. I started to cry, a weak cry but filled with immense relief.
“Where is he? Why don’t you have him here? I want to see him,” I begged, trying to get up, but the pain instantly forced me back into bed.
Diego gently grabbed my shoulders to stop me from moving.
“Relax, don’t move, your stitches are still fresh,” she explained patiently, though her voice was still trembling. “You lost a lot of blood in the operating room. They had to give you a transfusion. Mateo was born very small. He’s eight months premature, and his lungs weren’t fully developed yet to breathe properly on his own. He also swallowed some blood because of the placental abruption.”
I felt a knot in my chest. My poor baby. My little one. Suffering all this because of the greed and hatred of those people.
“He’s in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit,” Diego continued, wiping a tear from his cheek. “He’s in an incubator. They have him on oxygen and are giving him medication, but the pediatrician says he’s strong. That he reacted well. He weighs just over two kilos, but he’s fighting, Vale. Our son is a warrior.”
We cried together. Diego rested his head on my chest, careful not to hurt me, and hugged me. We cried for the fear we had endured, for our son’s life, and for the family that had just been shattered forever.
After a while, when I calmed down a bit and managed to take a few sips of water with a straw that a nurse who came in to check on me brought me, my mind began to clear.
Memories of the family meal hit me like a block of ice.
The shove. The fall. My mother-in-law’s laughter. The black bag with the witchcraft and the bank statements. The theft of the hospital money.
My gaze hardened. I looked at Diego, who was still sitting next to me, holding my hand.
“What happened after I fainted?” I asked. My voice no longer sounded scared. It sounded cold. Determined.
Diego clenched his jaw. I saw his knuckles turn white from how tightly he gripped the bed rail.
“When I saw the blood on the floor…” Diego began, his voice thick with deep resentment, “when I saw you faint in that pool of red… I went crazy. I wanted to kill Roberto right there. If my uncles hadn’t grabbed me, three of them, I swear to God, Valeria, I would have beaten him to death.”
He squeezed my hand.
—I called an ambulance. I carried you to the front door so they wouldn’t waste any time. When the paramedics put you in and I got in with you, my mom ran out into the street crying.
Diego let out a bitter, contemptuous laugh.
—He dared to tell me: “Son, don’t take her to the private hospital, take her to the Red Cross, it’s very expensive here and you know we don’t have any money.”
I felt disgust churning in my stomach. They had stolen the money for my delivery and still had the nerve to want to send me to a public place in the middle of a hemorrhage to continue covering up their theft.
“I yelled in his face, in front of all the neighbors who came out to see the gossip,” Diego said, looking me in the eyes with a determination that gave me peace. “I told him, ‘You two are criminals. You tried to kill my wife and my son. Forget about having a family.’”
Diego took a breath, as if it were difficult for him to continue.
—I was here in the waiting room for the three hours your surgery lasted. They were the longest three hours of my life. They told me you had internal bleeding. That they didn’t know if they’d be able to control it. That Mateo wasn’t breathing at birth and they had to resuscitate him. I was pacing back and forth, feeling like I was dying.
He wiped his face with his arm.
—And then, they arrived.
I opened my eyes in surprise.
“Did they arrive at the hospital?” I asked, unable to believe the level of cynicism of those people.
—Yes. My mom and Roberto. They arrived a few hours later, playing the victim. My mom was crying her eyes out in the emergency room hallways, asking for “her daughter-in-law and her little grandson,” as if she didn’t give a damn about us. Roberto was behind her, quiet, his face bruised from the blows I managed to land on him.
I felt my blood boil in my veins. The outrage was stronger than the painkillers.
—They wanted to put on a show so that, if the uncles or anyone else in the family asked, they could say that they were very worried and that it had all been a “tragic accident” caused by your clumsiness.
“What did you do?” I asked, fixing my eyes on his. I needed to know that my husband had been by my side until the very end.
Diego got up from his chair. He walked to the small window in the room and looked outside, where it was already night in Mexico City.
—I called the hospital security guards. I told them that those two people had caused your condition, that they had physically assaulted you, and that they were not allowed to be within 100 meters of you or the nursery.
Diego turned towards me. His face reflected immense sadness, the sadness of a man who had just lost the family he grew up with, but it also reflected absolute protectiveness towards his new family.
—My mother started yelling, saying I was ungrateful, that some random woman had brainwashed me into turning against my own flesh and blood. That you must have put a spell on me to keep me dazed.
“They’re sick,” I whispered, slowly moving my head on the pillow.
“The guards dragged them out. They threatened to call the police. It was a scandal, Valeria. But I didn’t care. I don’t care what the family thinks, I don’t care if my uncles stop speaking to me. I know what I saw. I saw the evidence. I saw how they pushed you. I saw the stolen money.”
Diego walked back to the bed and sat down on the edge, carefully.
He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He placed it on the small table next to my bed.
—While you were in surgery and they weren’t giving me any news… I didn’t just sit idly by, Vale.
—What did you do, Diego?
—I called the police. And then I called my lawyer.
I remained silent, processing the information. Reporting your own mother and brother is not easy in a country like Mexico, where the idea of ”family comes first” is instilled in us from birth. It was a huge and painful decision for him.
—I sent them photos of the bank statements, photos of the bag with the witchcraft items, and the photo of you with the pin that I took with my cell phone before leaving the house. I told them about the shove. Right now, Roberto isn’t home. The coward ran away. My mom probably gave him money to hide until things calm down.
Diego took both my hands and kissed them.
“They stole the money I earned with the sweat of my brow. They thought we were fools. They tried to hurt the woman I love. And they almost took my son away. I will never forgive them, Valeria. Never. I want to see them in jail. Both of them.”
Hearing his words, I felt a weight lift from my soul. I had lost a lot of blood, I was in pain, hooked up to machines, and I couldn’t hold my newborn baby in my arms. But I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew that the man I had chosen to start a family with was a real man, who wouldn’t let anyone hurt us, even if that someone shared his last name.
A few knocks on the door interrupted our conversation.
He was the neonatologist. A tall man, wearing a white coat, with a tired face.
—Gentlemen—he said, entering the room with a small tablet in his hands—. Valeria, I’m glad to see you’re awake.
“Doctor… my son, how is Mateo?” I asked, feeling my heart racing again.
The doctor looked at us with a serious but kind expression.
—Mateo is stable. As your husband mentioned, he’s premature and his lungs need help. We’re giving him pulmonary surfactant to help them mature faster. We had to insert a central line for antibiotics and feeding, since he can’t drink milk yet due to his size and condition.
Every word the doctor said was like a needle in my heart. Thinking of my tiny baby, connected to tubes and needles instead of being warm and cozy against my chest, tore me apart.
“When will I be able to see him?” I asked, my voice choked with tears.
—As soon as your gynecologist authorizes you to be transferred to a wheelchair. You lost a lot of blood and are weak, but if your hemoglobin levels rise a little with the transfusion, we’ll take you to the NICU tomorrow morning so you can meet your champion.
Tomorrow. There were hours to go.
“Doctor, are there any lasting effects from the impact Valeria suffered?” Diego asked, his voice firm. “Did the blow or the lack of oxygen cause any brain damage to the child?”
That was the question that scared me the most. Silence returned to the room as the doctor reviewed the data on his screen.
“It’s too early to know for sure,” the pediatrician replied honestly. “Initial monitoring shows normal brain activity, but lack of oxygen during a placental abruption is always a risk factor. We’ll need to run several neurological tests over the next few days to be certain. For now, our priority is to ensure her lungs are functioning properly and that she gains weight.”
The doctor said goodbye, asking us for patience and faith.
When the door closed, I stared at the ceiling of the hospital room. The full weight of our situation settled upon me.
We didn’t have the money to pay the bill at this private hospital or for the days Mateo would need in the incubator in intensive care. That money was in Roberto’s pockets, probably spent on alcohol, parties, or paying dangerous people.
We were in debt, injured, and anxious about whether our son would suffer any permanent consequences as a result of the attack.
I closed my eyes, feeling the anger mix with the physical pain.
I wasn’t going to sit there crying. I wasn’t going to let that toxic, evil family get away with it. They had underestimated me. They thought that, because I was a pregnant woman and not from their socioeconomic “level,” I would let them walk all over me. They thought a shove and a bit of graveyard dirt would be enough to silence me.
They got the wrong person.
If there’s one thing I know how to do in life, as an accountant and as a woman who came from humble beginnings, it’s to fight for what’s right. And now, I had the most powerful reason in the world to fight: my son.
Diego sat down next to me again, resting his head on my shoulder. We were broken on the outside, but on the inside, courage was uniting us in a way that not even Doña Leticia, with all her wickedness, could have foreseen.
The legal battle and the fight for Mateo’s life had only just begun, and I was prepared to go to the very end.
CHAPTER 4
The night in the hospital felt endless. The rhythmic beeping of the machines and the dull ache in my abdomen kept me from sleeping for more than twenty minutes at a time. Every time I closed my eyes, I relived the exact moment Roberto’s body collided with mine, the creaking of the mahogany table, and the cold of the floor. I would wake with a start, searching my stomach with my hands, only to remember with a pang in my heart that Mateo was no longer there, but in a glass box three floors above, struggling to breathe.
At six in the morning, the nurse on duty came in to change my IV and check my cesarean incision. She was a mature woman with a kind face and soft hands who brought me a little peace amidst so much turmoil.
“You’ve progressed very well, Valeria,” she told me while checking the levels on the monitor. “Your hemoglobin levels stabilized after last night’s transfusion. The gynecologist has already reviewed your file and authorized us to put you in a wheelchair so you can go see your baby as soon as the shift change is over.”
I felt my soul returning to my body. That was the only medicine I needed.
Diego, who had fallen asleep in the plastic chair with his head resting on the edge of my bed, woke up when he heard the nurse’s voice. His face was tired, his eyes were puffy, and his hair was disheveled. He got up immediately, stretching his back with a groan of pain, and came over to me.
“Are you serious, nurse?” Diego asked, a spark of hope in his eyes. “Can we go up to see Mateo now?”
“Yes, Dad,” she replied with a smile. “Around eight in the morning, the NICU doctor gives the reports and allows the mothers to go in. Start getting ready.”
When the nurse left the room, Diego kissed my forehead. We went to the bathroom very slowly. With each step, I felt the skin of my abdomen stretch and burn, but I didn’t care. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and tried to comb my hair a little. I wanted my son to see me strong, even though inside I felt broken.
At 7:30 in the morning, a paramedic came in with a wheelchair. Diego helped me sit down, placing a small pillow behind my back to cushion my movements. We left the room and took the elevator up to the fourth floor, where the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was located.
The smell up there was different. It smelled of alcohol, pure disinfectant, and that tense silence that only exists in the corridors of a hospital where life and death are at stake. To enter, we had to go through a strict hygiene protocol. Diego helped me put on a blue protective gown, a face mask, and a hairnet. We washed our hands and arms up to the elbows with a special antiseptic soap, rubbing vigorously under warm water.
When the heavy doors of the NICU opened, I felt a chill. The place was filled with incubators lined up, each with a tiny being inside, surrounded by wires, monitors beeping in different tones, and plastic tubing.
The nurse on duty guided us to incubator number seven, at the back of the room.
“Here is your champion,” he whispered softly.
I wheeled the chair up to the glass. When I saw my son for the first time, tears streamed down my cheeks beneath my face mask. He was so tiny. His skin was pink, almost translucent, and he was completely naked except for a tiny diaper that was way too big for him and small bandages covering his eyes to protect them from the phototherapy light.
A thin tube went into his mouth to help him breathe, and his small chest rose and fell rapidly and artificially in time with the machine. He had a tiny needle taped to his right foot, connected to an IV drip, and several round patches on his abdomen to monitor his vital signs.
“Hello, my love…” I murmured, my voice breaking, pressing my hand against the glass of the incubator. “Mom’s here. I’m here now, my love.”
Mateo seemed to hear my voice. He made a small movement with his hands, opening and closing his tiny fingers, which were about the size of beans.
The nurse told me I could put my hands through two circular openings on the sides of the incubator. I put my trembling hands in, terrified of hurting him. I touched his little leg with my fingertips. His skin was incredibly soft and warm. Immediately, Mateo moved his left hand and grabbed my index finger with a strength that surprised me.
Diego leaned over to my side, placing his hand on my shoulder. I saw tears fall from his eyes and wet his face mask.
“He’s identical to you, Vale,” Diego whispered to me, his voice choked with emotion. “Look at his nose, it has the same shape as yours.”
We stayed there for almost an hour, not saying much, simply letting our son know that his parents were there, that we weren’t going to leave him alone in this battle. Seeing his fragility, but also his determination to cling to life, completely transformed the sadness and fear I felt into something different. I felt a cold, hard strength being born in my chest. An absolute determination. Those people who had done this to us were going to pay for every last penny and every last day of the suffering they were causing us.
Upon leaving the NICU, we returned to the room. The adrenaline from the encounter with Mateo began to subside, and the harsh economic and legal reality hit us like a bucket of cold water.
A young woman from the hospital administration entered the room just ten minutes after we arrived. She was carrying a blue folder and had an expression of obvious discomfort.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, clearing his throat. “I apologize for interrupting your rest, but I need to review your account status. As you know, Mrs. Valeria’s emergency surgery, blood transfusion, and the baby’s admission to the neonatal intensive care unit have resulted in significant expenses. As of this morning, the bill totals one hundred and forty thousand pesos.”
Diego stood up, visibly saddened, rubbing his hands together.
—Yes, miss, we know. The thing is, we had a serious problem with our bank account… fraud, actually. We’re sorting that out. Can’t we leave a guarantee or sign a promissory note while the police investigate?
The young lady shook her head, her posture a little tense.
“I’m very sorry, sir, but hospital policies are very strict. To keep the baby in the NICU and continue the lady’s treatment, we need at least 50 percent of the current balance paid today, and the rest can be covered as daily expenses arise. The daily rate for the incubator and ventilator is 25,000 pesos, not including specialized medications.”
Every number that came out of his mouth felt like a punch to the gut. The money Roberto had stolen from our savings account totaled almost two hundred and sixty thousand pesos. It was exactly what we needed to feel secure in a situation like this. Now we were broke, owing a fortune, and with a baby who couldn’t be taken to a public hospital because his condition was too fragile to withstand the journey in an ordinary ambulance.
“Okay, miss,” I said, my voice firm enough to surprise Diego. “Give me a couple of hours. My husband is going down to the register to make a payment. Let us review our finances.”
The employee nodded, left us a printed statement of account, and left the room.
Diego slumped down on the sofa, clutching his head in his hands, on the verge of despair.
“Where are we going to get seventy thousand pesos today, Valeria?” she said, her voice filled with anguish. “My credit cards have a limit of twenty thousand pesos each. You know where my personal savings went. I don’t have anyone I can borrow that money from overnight.”
“Calm down, Diego,” I said, keeping a cool head. “Think like an accountant, not a victim. Now, give me my cell phone and my computer that you brought in your backpack from home.”
Diego brought me the things. I turned on my laptop, carefully placing it on my lap so as not to put pressure on the wound. I connected to the hospital’s internet network and immediately logged into my accounting firm’s system. I’m not an employee; I own my own business. I’ve worked with local business owners, merchants, and construction companies for years. I have clients who trust me implicitly because I’ve legally saved them millions of pesos in taxes and organized their finances.
I checked my office bank account. I had about forty thousand pesos saved there, which were earmarked for the office rent and my assistant’s fees for the following month. It wasn’t enough.
So, I opened my address book for top clients. I took a deep breath, swallowing my pride. Under normal circumstances, I would never do this, but my son’s life was at stake. I dialed Don Fernando’s number, the owner of a chain of auto parts stores in the state and one of my oldest and most loyal customers.
—Hello? Mr. Fernando? Good morning, this is Valeria speaking —I said, trying to make my voice sound as normal and professional as possible.
—Valeria, my dear! It’s so nice to see you. How’s that belly doing? The heir is almost here, isn’t he? —the man replied in his usual cheerful and friendly tone.
—Don Fernando, in fact, has already been born. There was a medical complication and they had to perform an emergency C-section. The baby is in intensive care —I blurted out abruptly, without hesitation.
Don Fernando’s tone immediately changed to one of deep concern.
—Oh my God, Valeria. What terrible news. But how are you and the baby? What do you need? Which hospital are you in?
“We’re doing well, Don Fernando, though we’re still fighting. But I’m calling because I need to ask you a huge favor. I know we scheduled your companies’ annual audit for two months from now, and my fee is paid upon completion of the work. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to give me an advance on that fee today. I know it’s unusual, but I need to cover the initial hospital expenses.”
Not even three seconds passed before Don Fernando answered.
“Honey, don’t say another word. You’ve been taking care of my business for five years like it was your own. You’re an honest, hardworking woman. Give me the hospital account details or your personal account right now. I’m not going to pay you the fee upfront; I’m going to transfer 100,000 pesos right now. We’ll sort out the work later. Right now, you just focus on your son and getting better. The money’s on its way.”
I felt a knot of gratitude close in my throat.
—Thank you very much, Don Fernando. You have no idea what this means to us. I’ll send you the details by message.
I hung up the call and looked at Diego, who was watching me with wide eyes, a mixture of admiration and relief on his face.
“The first payment is ready,” I told him, showing him the screen. “Don Fernando is going to deposit one hundred thousand pesos. Go to the hospital cashier as soon as the transfer goes through and pay what they’re asking for. We’ll keep the rest for the following days.”
Diego came up to me and hugged me tightly, with a silent cry of gratitude.
—You’re amazing, Vale. Seriously, I don’t know what I’d do without you. Forgive me for bringing you into this situation, for not seeing what kind of trash my mom and brother were.
“It’s not your fault you’re doing the dirty things they do, Diego,” I replied, stroking his back. “But now it’s up to both of us to show them that we’re not to be trifled with.”
At eleven in the morning, the tranquility of the room was once again interrupted. Two men dressed in dark suits and wearing official badges knocked on the door. They were agents from the State Attorney General’s Office’s Investigative Police, accompanied by a public prosecutor. Diego had contacted them the night before, and they had finally come to the hospital to take my formal statement.
The public prosecutor, a man in his forties with a serious face and slow gestures, sat in the chair next to my bed and took out a digital tablet to record everything.
“Mrs. Valeria, we know you’re going through a delicate health situation, but it’s extremely important that you tell us what happened yesterday at the house on Tulipanes Street,” the official said, adjusting his glasses. “Your husband has already filed an initial complaint, but since you were the direct victim of the physical assault, your testimony is key to proceeding legally.”
I took a deep breath and, with all the clarity and composure I could muster, recounted everything that had happened. From the months of mistreatment and mockery from my brother-in-law Roberto, to the exact moment he intentionally pushed me with his arm and hip as I tried to get up from the table, the impact of my stomach against the edge of the mahogany wood, my fall to the floor, and the subsequent laughter of my mother-in-law, Doña Leticia.
I also detailed what happened when the dog pulled the canvas bag out from under the chair: the scratched wedding photograph with the pin stuck in my belly, the dark powders and, above all, the bank statements with the passwords written down that proved the systematic theft of our son’s money.
The public prosecutor quickly took notes, nodding his head.
“Mrs. Valeria, based on your account and the photographic evidence your husband has already submitted to the investigation, we are dealing with a very serious series of crimes,” the official explained firmly. “First, we have the crime of aggravated assault, made more serious by the victim’s pregnancy and the physical advantage he had. The fact that the assailant knew you were eight months pregnant and used physical force to slam you against a solid object constitutes a premeditated act that placed the life of an unborn child and your own life at imminent risk.”
He paused and checked some papers in his folder.
Secondly, regarding the money, the crimes of family fraud and ongoing identity theft are established, since they used bank security devices without the account holder’s authorization to divert funds for their own benefit. And finally, we are evaluating Ms. Leticia’s responsibility as a co-perpetrator or accomplice by omission of assistance and participation in the plan to cause physical harm.
“What are the chances they’ll be caught?” Diego asked, his voice thick with barely contained anger. “My brother left home yesterday. My mom stayed behind, but she probably knows where he’s hiding.”
The investigating officer intervened in the conversation.
—We have already requested the CNBV (National Banking and Securities Commission) to immediately trace the movements of the accounts where the stolen money was deposited. We know that a large portion of that money was transferred to an account in the name of a third party who has a history of fraud and illegal gambling. Apparently, his brother Roberto had substantial debts with people involved in informal lending, the kind known as “gota a gota” (drop by drop). That explains his desperation to obtain the money at any cost.
I felt a chill when I heard that. My brother-in-law was mixed up with criminals, and my mother-in-law had been willing to sacrifice her grandson’s life to save her parasitic eldest son from the consequences of his vices.
“Regarding Roberto’s whereabouts,” the officer continued, “we have a warrant for his arrest and are monitoring the homes of his uncles and close acquaintances. We’ve also issued an alert at the city’s bus terminals and airport in case he tries to leave the state. As for Ms. Leticia, she will be served with a restraining order this afternoon. She is prohibited from approaching you, this hospital, or her home. Furthermore, she must appear before the District Attorney’s office within 48 hours, under penalty of law.”
I signed the digital declaration with trembling fingers but with immense satisfaction. The legal process was underway. The machinery of justice, which sometimes seems slow in our country, was moving quickly this time due to the gravity of the situation: a newborn in critical condition in intensive care after a physical assault.
The officers said their goodbyes and left us alone again. Diego immediately went down to the hospital cashier to pay the one hundred thousand pesos with the transfer that Don Fernando had already deposited into my account. When he returned to the room, he seemed a little calmer, with a less tense demeanor.
However, the peace did not last long.
At three in the afternoon, Diego’s cell phone began to ring on the nightstand. The caller ID displayed his mother’s name: “Mom Leti.”
Diego stared at the phone, his face flushed with anger. He let it ring until the call ended. A few seconds later, the phone rang again. And then again. It was a sickening persistence.
“Answer me, Diego,” I said, staring at him from the bed. “Put it on speakerphone. I want to hear what lies you have to tell now that you know the police are looking for you.”
Diego nodded, his jaw clenched. He swiped his finger across the screen and activated the speakerphone.
—What do you want, Leticia? —said Diego, omitting the word “mom” for the first time in his life.
On the other end of the line, a loud, scandalous cry, full of hypocrisy and theatrical drama, was immediately heard. Background noises indicated that she was in her living room.
“Diego! My darling son! You’ve finally answered me!” Doña Leticia cried between feigned sobs. “I’ve been praying to Our Lady of Guadalupe all night for you. I came home from the hospital exhausted because those rude guards treated me like a criminal. Please tell me how my grandson is; I desperately need to know about my own flesh and blood.”
“You don’t care about my son, Leticia,” Diego replied in a voice so cold it chilled the blood. “You and Roberto almost killed him yesterday. Don’t you dare call him your grandson.”
My mother-in-law’s crying stopped abruptly, transforming into that manipulative and authoritarian tone of voice she used to control everyone in her family.
“Oh, Diego, please don’t be so hard on your brother,” said Doña Leticia, immediately changing the subject. “What happened yesterday was an accident, I already told you. Roberto was drunk, he didn’t know his own strength. Besides, that woman of yours is such an exaggerator, she’s always tried to make us look bad in front of you. He fell because he’s clumsy, not because your brother meant to hurt him.”
“I was there, Leticia!” Diego shouted, losing his patience. “I saw the damn bag with the witchcraft stuff! I saw my bank statements that you gave her so she could steal my hospital money! I saw the picture of my wife with a pin stuck in her stomach! You’re not going to fool me again!”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Doña Leticia realized that her usual lies weren’t working anymore. When a Mexican mother like that is cornered, she goes from victimhood to aggression in a second. That’s exactly what she did.
“Look, Diego,” my mother-in-law said, her voice drawn out and dripping with venom. “Don’t speak to me like that. I gave you life. I took care of that brother you despise so much while you went off to study for your little degrees. That money you say we stole… we needed it to pay off a debt of honor your brother owed you. You have plenty, that starving accountant has her own firm and earns a good living, it wouldn’t cost you anything to help us. Family comes first, Diego. Blood isn’t betrayed for some woman on the street.”
Hearing her call me that, after having almost lost my life in her dining room, gave me a jolt of energy that made me sit up in bed despite the pain from the stitches.
“You’re the only woman on the street here, Leticia!” I yelled at her with all my might into the phone. “You’re a criminal, a thief, and a bad mother. You paid some charlatan at the market with my son’s money to hurt me. You helped your delinquent son, Roberto, beat me up. Your son is in intensive care on a ventilator because of you.”
Doña Leticia let out a bitter laugh over the phone.
“Oh, look who’s talking again, that starving woman! You don’t scare me, Valeria. You’re just a stranger to this family. And you, Diego, you’d better withdraw that complaint you filed with the Prosecutor’s Office. Some police officers came by an hour ago to give me some papers. If anything happens to Roberto, if the police touch him, I swear on your father’s memory that you’ll regret it. I’ll die of grief because of you, and you’ll carry your mother’s death on your conscience for the rest of your life.”
That was Doña Leticia’s last resort: emotional blackmail using her health. She had used it for years to get Diego to buy her things, to give her money, and to make her endure Roberto’s insults. But this time, the shield of guilt had completely shattered.
Diego stared at his phone, a quiet sadness in his eyes. It was the sadness of seeing that the woman who had given him life was nothing more than a selfish monster.
“Whether you die from the pressure or in jail makes absolutely no difference to me, Leticia,” Diego said in a calm, firm, and final voice. “As far as I’m concerned, you and Roberto have been dead since five o’clock yesterday afternoon. Don’t come looking for us again. If I ever see you near my wife or my son again, I’ll personally make sure you spend the rest of your days locked up in prison. Goodbye.”
Diego hung up before she could answer. He placed his phone on the table and covered his face with his hands. His body trembled from the emotional strain of having broken the strongest bond in his life. I stretched out on the bed as far as I could and took his hands, moving them away from his face.
“You did the right thing, love,” I said, looking into his eyes. “It cost us dearly, but we’re finally free of them. Now our only priority is that little bit of life up there in the incubator.”
The following days in the hospital were a test of physical and emotional endurance. I was discharged on the fourth day after surgery. The C-section wound was healing well, but the feeling of leaving the hospital empty-handed, leaving Mateo in the NICU, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through.
We settled into a small hotel that was two blocks from the clinic so as not to waste time on transfers and to be present at each of the three report times given by the pediatrician.
Every day, the routine was the same: wash our arms, put on the blue gown, enter the NICU, touch Mateo through the glass of the incubator, and listen to the medical reports. Our son’s lungs were responding well to the treatment. On the sixth day, the doctors were able to remove the mechanical ventilator and put him on a simple oxygen mask. By the ninth day, Mateo was breathing on his own.
Seeing him without that tube in his mouth, being able to see his whole face for the first time, and hearing his first faint cry was the most beautiful moment of my life. The nurse allowed me to take him out of the incubator for the first time to practice kangaroo care, which involves placing the naked baby on my bare chest so he can feel the warmth of my skin and the beat of my heartbeat.
When I felt his tiny body, as light as a feather, breathing against my chest, I understood that all the suffering of Sunday lunch had been worth it if the result was having him here. Diego sat beside us, wrapping his arms around us, and for the first time in many days, we could smile with genuine happiness.
On the tenth day of our admission to the hospital, we received a call from the Investigative Police agent handling our case. He had important news.
“Mr. Diego, Mrs. Valeria, I’m calling to inform you that two hours ago we proceeded with the arrest of Roberto,” said the agent on the other end of the line.
I felt a great weight lifted from my shoulders immediately.
“Where did they find him?” asked Diego, who was listening to the call next to me.
“The suspect was hiding in a safe house in the municipality of Ecatepec, in the State of Mexico,” the police officer explained. “He tried to make a cash withdrawal with a debit card linked to a secondary account that we had under surveillance. The bank’s system issued a location alert, and our officers, in coordination with local authorities, apprehended him as he left an ATM.”
The agent paused and we heard the sound of some leaves rustling in his office.
—Mr. Roberto attempted to resist arrest, but he has already been transferred to the social rehabilitation center in our city. His arraignment hearing before the judge will be held tomorrow morning. The Public Prosecutor’s Office will request pretrial detention due to the risk of flight and the seriousness of the aggravated assault charge against Ms. Valeria.
—And what about Mrs. Leticia? —I asked, wanting to know if the matriarch was also going to face the consequences of her actions.
“Ms. Leticia was formally notified of her indictment as an accomplice for concealment and fraud,” the investigator replied. “Due to her age, and because she provided a medical certificate documenting chronic health problems, the judge will likely grant her bail. However, she is prohibited from leaving the city, her passport has been confiscated, and she must report to the court every two weeks. Furthermore, all bank accounts in her name have been frozen by the Financial Intelligence Unit to begin the process of recovering the stolen money.”
We thanked the officer and hung up. I looked at Diego and saw a mixture of relief and quiet sadness on his face. I know that seeing his brother behind bars and his mother facing criminal charges was never something he would have wanted, but divine justice and human justice had finally aligned to protect us.
Two weeks after the attack, the long-awaited day arrived. The gynecologist and the neonatologist signed Mateo’s final discharge papers. Our son already weighed 2.2 kilograms, sucked on his bottle strongly on his own, and all the neurological tests he underwent came back completely clear. The blow against the mahogany table and the initial lack of oxygen had left no lasting effects on his little brain. He was a healthy, strong, and vibrant baby.
The final hospital bill was enormous, but thanks to Don Fernando’s support, and to loans my other clients granted me with every possible assistance—since we managed to get the firm’s medical insurance to cover part of the cost because it was an accident caused by a third party—we were able to settle everything without going bankrupt. The firm continued operating, and I was more eager to work than ever.
The day we left through the main doors of the hospital, the afternoon sun of Mexico City shone brightly, illuminating the streets. Diego carried the diaper bag and carefully opened the car door, while I held Mateo, wrapped tightly in a blue blanket, in my arms.
Before getting into the car, I stopped for a moment and looked up at the sky, breathing in the fresh evening air.
I remembered Sunday dinners, my mother-in-law’s cruel laughter, Roberto’s hateful glare, and the dark witchcraft bag lying on the floor. All of that was now in the past. A painful past that had left us with physical and emotional scars, but that had also made us indestructible.
They thought that by pushing me against that table they would destroy us. They thought that with their greed and their wickedness they would take away our joy of being parents. But all they managed to do was pull us out of that toxic family charade and force us to build our own path, a path based on real love, respect, and mutual protection.
I got into the passenger seat, settling Mateo into his infant car seat in the back. Diego got into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and took my right hand, intertwining his fingers with mine.
We looked at each other and didn’t need to say a word. We smiled with the peace of mind of those who have won the most important battle of their lives. We drove back home, ready to truly begin our new life, leaving the horror behind and embracing the miracle of our true family.
END
