Part 1
Valeria Santillán woke up in a bed at the Civil Hospital of Guadalajara with a dry mouth, her body trembling, and such intense pain in her ribs that she could barely breathe without feeling like she was being torn apart from the inside.
The monitor beeped beside her. In the hallway, there were quick footsteps, muffled voices, the squeal of gurney wheels, and that cold smell of chlorine, medicine, and fear that hospitals carry when someone has just been on the edge of death.
The doctor told her she had two fractured ribs, a severe sprain in her left knee, her right arm immobilized, and seven stitches in her forehead.
He also told her she had been lucky.
Valeria didn’t respond. She thought that luck, if it existed, shouldn’t feel like a truck had run over her soul.
She was thirty years old and had been married for six years to Alejandro Rivas — a man who in public seemed perfect. Attentive. Funny. Polite. One of those who opens the door for his wife and greets everyone with a hug and a smile.
But at home, it was a different story.
At home, Alejandro didn’t ask, he ordered. He didn’t argue, he punished. He didn’t always shout, because he didn’t even need to. Sometimes it was enough to stop speaking to her for two days, to look at her as though she were a burden, or to repeat that no decent woman made her husband look bad.
And above Alejandro was his mother.
Doña Mercedes Rivas was the absolute queen of that family. An elegant, perfumed woman with perfect nails and a tongue that could cut sharper than a kitchen knife.
She never used direct insults. She preferred venomous phrases.
That Valeria didn’t know how to run a household.
That an intelligent wife understood family came first.
That Alejandro deserved a less dramatic woman.
That morning, before the accident, Doña Mercedes had been sending messages for hours. It was her birthday dinner. She wanted mole de olla, red rice, flan, cream-colored candles, and the table set before seven o’clock.
Valeria had left for a job interview downtown. As she stepped off the curb, the pedestrian light was green.
She heard an engine accelerating.
Then a brutal impact.
The sky turned.
The pavement scraped her skin.
Someone screamed.
After that, nothing.
When Alejandro entered her room three hours later, Valeria expected to see him worried. She expected, if only out of habit, a question.
Instead he looked at the splint, the hospital gown, the wires, the dried blood in her hair, and let out a sigh of irritation.
“Seriously, Valeria. Are you really going to do this today?”
She blinked, confused.
Alejandro approached the bed.
“It’s my mom’s birthday. Everyone is already waiting. Get up. You can still make it there and get dinner ready.”
Valeria thought she had misunderstood.
“I have two broken ribs,” she whispered.
He clenched his jaw.
“People get into accidents every day. That doesn’t mean they abandon their families. My mom isn’t to blame for your problems.”
He pulled back the sheet.
Cold air touched her bruises. Valeria let out a groan.
Alejandro grabbed her by her uninjured wrist and pulled.
“Get up.”
Her injured knee touched the floor and buckled immediately. Pain shot up like fire through her hip.
“Please, Alejandro, it hurts—”
“Stop it already,” he hissed. “Always playing the victim.”
At that moment, the door opened.
Alejandro turned around furiously, ready to confront whoever had entered.
But when he saw who was standing there, he let go of Valeria’s wrist as though it had burned him.
Rodrigo, Valeria’s older brother, was at the door.
And beside him, with a black folder under his arm and an expression like cold steel, stood Commander Julián Ortega.
