Chapter 3: The Slow Burn
Three days had passed. The "honeymoon" was officially over. Carmen and Javier were panicking. They expected Sofia to return, to apologize, to sign the papers, and to beg for forgiveness. Instead, they got silence.
Javier called Sofia’s phone a hundred times. We ignored every one of them. Then he started calling me.
"She’s acting irrational," Javier’s voice was smooth, rehearsed. "She had a breakdown, Elena. She needs to come home. We’re worried."
"She’s not coming home, Javier," I said, leaning back in my chair while Alexander signaled for me to keep him talking. "She’s with her family. And her father is quite concerned about the bruising on her face."
There was a pause. "Bruising? She fell. She’s... she’s always been clumsy."
"We have the hotel footage, Javier," I said, my voice sweet as honey. "We have the audio of you telling your mother not to leave visible marks. We have everything."
The line went dead.
While we toyed with them, Alexander was busy in the shadows. Carmen’s husband—Javier’s father—was a passive, quiet man who worked for a firm Alexander held significant shares in. By the end of the day, Alexander had engineered a "financial review" of the firm. Suddenly, the discrepancies in Carmen’s household expenses became impossible to ignore.
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Her husband was summoned for a meeting. He was shown the receipts. He was shown the bank transfers to the "charity" accounts that were actually Carmen’s personal slush funds.
Carmen thought she had the perfect life. She didn't realize that Alexander had been the architect behind her husband's success for years. He didn't just know where the bodies were buried; he owned the land.
