Part 2
Santiago called Mariana that night.
“Are they mine?” he asked.
Silence.
“Yes,” she finally said. “They’re twins, Santiago.”
He could barely breathe.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mariana laughed bitterly. “You don’t get to ask that after you shut the door.”
He admitted that Rogelio had told him she had concealed medical results.
“And you believed him,” she said. “You wanted someone to blame.”
Before he could respond, a message from his investigator arrived. Men were watching Mariana’s workshop. The children were upstairs.
He rushed to Roma and found Mariana at the door holding a baseball bat. Mateo was crying in his pajamas. Elisa clutched a stuffed rabbit.
“They have to leave,” Santiago said. “They’re not safe.”
Mariana hated taking orders from him, but her fear for the children moved her. She told them to grab shoes, jackets, and their “turtle game.” Santiago realized she had trained them to flee without frightening them.
They escaped to the home of Julia Ortega, Mariana’s lawyer.
There, old documents revealed a hidden clause in the Ledesma family trust: if Santiago had biological children, a substantial portion of the fortune would be placed in their names when they turned five.
The twins had turned five the previous month.
“So that’s why you came back,” Mariana said coldly.
“No,” Santiago replied. “I didn’t know.”
“But someone did.”
Then Renata appeared at the door, soaked and shaking, gripping a USB drive.
“Let me talk,” she begged. “I know who altered the files.”
Inside, Renata confessed that Rogelio had paid people to falsify medical records and push Mariana out of Santiago’s life. Worse, someone had tried to access the nursery the night the twins were born using forged documents.
Mariana went pale.
Elisa appeared in the hallway, holding her rabbit.
“Mom,” she whispered, “does that lady know my name?”
Renata covered her mouth.
And Mariana understood the danger had never ended.
