Chapter 7 - The Debt My Name Was Carrying
I confronted Álvaro the next morning.
He was sitting in our apartment as though nothing had happened.
I threw the documents onto the table.
“Thirty-two million.”
He looked at them.
“Mariana—”
“You lied to me for six years.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“You used my name.”
“I had no choice.”
“You always had a choice.”
He stood.
“Do you think I wanted this?”
“I don't know what you wanted.”
He looked exhausted.
“My father threatened to destroy everything if I told you.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked at me.
“Because when I was twenty-two, he destroyed my brother.”
I froze.
“What brother?”
Álvaro's face changed.
“My older brother, Daniel.”
I had never heard that name.
He sat down.
“Daniel discovered what Dad was doing.”
“What happened?”
“He disappeared.”
My heart sank.
“Disappeared how?”
“No one knows.”
“Your father knows.”
“Yes.”
“Esteban knows.”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
“And Camila?”
“She found documents.”
“About Daniel?”
He nodded.
I sat opposite him.
“What does Daniel have to do with my money?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because everything started with him.”
Álvaro explained that Daniel had discovered Don Ernesto was moving company assets through shell companies.
He threatened to expose him.
Then Daniel vanished.
Don Ernesto blamed Esteban.
Esteban blamed Don Ernesto.
And the debt became the price of silence.
I asked:
“Is Daniel alive?”
Álvaro looked away.
“I don't know.”
My phone rang.
Sofía.
She had discovered something.
A medical record.
An unidentified male patient admitted six years earlier under an unknown name.
The age matched Daniel.
The hospital was outside Monterrey.
I stared at the screen.
“Where?”
Sofía gave me the address.
I looked at Álvaro.
He immediately understood.
“You found him.”
“I don't know.”
“But you're going.”
“Yes.”
“I'll come.”
“No.”
“Mariana.”
“You lost the right to follow me when you lied.”
He looked devastated.
I left.
At the hospital archive, the record was incomplete.
Male.
Approximately thirty-four.
Severe trauma.
Admitted under a false identity.
Transferred after two days.
The attending physician had written one note:
Patient repeatedly asked for his brother Álvaro.
I felt my heart pound.
“Where was he transferred?”
The archivist shook his head.
“No record.”
Then she checked another file.
“There is something here.”
She handed me a photocopy.
It contained a transport number.
The destination:
Norte Alto Medical Storage Facility.
I stared at it.
Norte Alto had supposedly been a consulting company.
Why did it have a medical storage facility?
I called Sofía.
“We need to investigate the warehouse.”
She agreed.
That night, we drove there.
The building looked abandoned.
The door was locked.
Sofía found a way inside.
We walked through a dark corridor.
Dust covered the floor.
Then we saw boxes.
Hundreds.
All labeled with patient numbers.
I opened one.
Inside were medical files.
Insurance records.
Personal information.
I felt sick.
Someone had been stealing patient data.
And then I found one folder with my own name.
I opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
It showed me six years earlier.
Standing beside Álvaro on our wedding day.
But behind us was a man I had never seen.
A man holding a baby.
On the back of the photograph was one sentence:
She was never supposed to know.
Then the warehouse lights turned on.
May you like
And a man's voice came from behind us.
“Now you know.”
