Chapter 3 - The Ghost of the Engagement Night
The afternoon light shifted, casting long, golden bars across the hospital floor as I poured over the remaining pages of the internal affairs file. Every document peeled back another layer of deception, exposing a network of lies so intricate that it made my head spin.
According to the financial audit sheets included in the packet, Diego hadn't just been visiting Renata out of a misguided sense of obligation. For the past ten years, a steady monthly transfer of fifteen percent of his hazard-pay salary had been routed through a secondary credit union account directly into a mortgage trust managed by Renata’s name. A mortgage trust for a two-bedroom apartment in the upscale Polanco district—purchased just three weeks before our wedding.
I remembered that apartment. Years ago, when we were house-hunting for our first starter home, Diego had insisted that the Polanco area was too expensive, steering us toward a modest townhouse further south near Coyoacán. He had told me, with tears in his eyes, that he wanted to ensure we lived within our means so I wouldn't have to work 12-hour shifts at the hospital while pregnant.
It was all a masterpiece of manipulation. He had kept me in a modest, struggling household while subsidizing a secret life just a few neighborhoods away.
The door creaked open again. This time, it wasn't Emiliano or Dr. Morales.
Diego stood in the doorway.
He looked like a man who had been dragged through a hurricane and left for dead. His uniform jacket was unbuttoned, his tie wrenched loose, and dark, bruised circles hollowed out the skin beneath his eyes. His gaze locked onto mine with a desperate, pleading intensity that once would have melted my heart.
—Mariana, — he choked out, taking a tentative step into the room. — Please. I tried to see you yesterday, but security said... they said you gave explicit instructions...
I didn't move. I sat upright against the pillows, my hands resting protectively over my swollen belly, keeping the manila folder half-hidden beneath the blanket on my lap.
—Why are you here, Diego? —my voice was cold, perfectly level, devoid of the tears he was clearly expecting. — Shouldn't you be in Polanco? Checking on your other dependent?
Diego froze mid-step. The color drained entirely from his sun-browned face, leaving him looking ghastly under the fluorescent lights. His lips parted, but no sound came out for several seconds.
—What... what did you say? —he stammered, his eyes darting frantically toward the bedside table.
—You heard me, — I said, pulling the IA file out from under the blanket and dropping it onto the mattress between us. The heavy paper slid across the white sheets, stopping inches from his boots. — Ten years, Diego. Ten years of warehouse fires that never happened. Ten years of emergency calls from a woman who knew how to push your buttons just enough to make you abandon your family. And yesterday, when I was suffocating in an elevator with a dying heart rate and a baby struggling to survive in my womb, you didn't just make a split-second mistake. You checked your dispatch console, saw my name, and deliberately overrode it to save Renata.
Diego lunged forward, falling to his knees beside the bed, his calloused hands—hands that had once held me with such fierce tenderness—grasping desperately at the edge of the blanket.
—Mariana, please! You don't understand the whole story! It’s not what it looks like on those papers! —he cried, his voice cracking with genuine anguish. — Renata... she isn't just an ex-girlfriend. There’s a reason why I am legally bound to protect her. There’s a secret she’s been holding over my head since the academy!
I looked down at him, my eyes narrowing. A cold, bitter anger surged through my veins, pushing away every ounce of grief I had felt during those seven hours in the dark.
—A secret? —I laughed, a short, humorless sound. — Oh, spare me the melodrama, Diego. What could possibly justify abandoning your pregnant wife while she fights for air? Did she threaten to burn down a fire station? Did she threaten to expose some juvenile secret from your college days?
—It’s worse than that, Mariana, — Diego sobbed, burying his face in his hands against the edge of the mattress. — It involves my brother. It involves what happened the night he died.
The air in the room instantly froze.
My brother-in-law, Mateo, had died in a tragic residential fire ten years ago—just two months before Diego and I became officially engaged. At the time, the department report ruled it an accidental electrical fault in the basement wiring. Diego had grieved for months, vowing to dedicate his life to the fire service in Mateo's honor.
I stared down at the weeping man at my feet, the first tendrils of a terrifying new reality creeping into the edges of my mind.
—What does Mateo have to do with Renata? —I whispered, the anger suddenly replaced by an icy dread.
May you like
Diego raised his head, his eyes red-rimmed, wet with tears, and filled with a terror I had never seen before in all our years together.
—Because Mateo didn't die in an accident, Mariana, — he choked out, his voice trembling so violently the words barely registered. — And Renata was the only witness who knows the truth about who locked that basement door from the outside.
