PART 2
“You’re making the worst mistake of your life,” Daniela said, dropping her voice.
Rodrigo did not answer. He picked up the cup using a napkin, the way he had seen done in films, and called his head of security.
— Lock all the exits. Nobody leaves this house.
Daniela went pale.
— You’re treating me like a criminal because of what an employee said?
“I’m trying to save my son,” he replied.
Lucía knelt beside Emiliano. The boy was struggling to breathe, but when he felt her hand he seized it with desperate strength.
“Don’t leave me,” he murmured.
— You are not alone, my child.
The private ambulance arrived ten minutes later. Rodrigo lifted his son into his arms and felt, for the first time, how light he had become. Emiliano had lost a great deal of weight in just a few weeks, and he — blinded by meetings, travel, and Daniela’s quiet voice — had not noticed.
At the hospital, the doctors received the cup, drew blood samples, and began treating the spasms. Daniela demanded to enter the emergency room. Rodrigo would not allow it.
“I am his wife,” she insisted.
— And he is my son.
Lucía told them everything — the bottle, the drops, the nights when Daniela insisted on personally delivering the chocolate, the boy’s constant fear. Rodrigo listened without a word, each detail driving into him like fresh guilt.
Hours later, a toxicologist came out with a grave expression.
“Your son isn’t crazy, Mr. Arriaga. He has traces of a substance that causes abdominal pain, confusion, spasms, and abnormal sensations. In a child, it can produce the feeling that something is moving inside his body.”
Rodrigo felt the ground disappear.
— Someone gave it to him?
The doctor did not respond immediately.
— Based on the frequency of the symptoms, it appears to be repeated exposure.
Rodrigo lowered himself into a chair in the hallway. He covered his face with both hands. He did not cry loudly. It was worse than that. He sat motionless and trembling, as though something had been torn out of him.
He had threatened to have his son committed.
He had called him a manipulator.
He had left him alone in front of the person who was destroying him.
Meanwhile, back at the house, his head of security found the jar hidden behind the spices. Two more were discovered inside Daniela’s toiletry bag, wrapped in tissues and unlabeled.
But the true shock came when they accessed the computer in the master bedroom.
There were searches about inheritances, legal guardianships, the psychiatric hospitalization of minors, and proceedings to have a child declared legally incompetent. There were draft emails addressed to lawyers in which Daniela described Emiliano as “unstable, aggressive, and a danger to himself.”
Rodrigo read one sentence several times:
“If the child is permanently hospitalized, Rodrigo will be emotionally dependent on me, and it will be easier to modify the will.”
He did not shout.
He did not smash the laptop.
He simply stared at the screen until his rage turned to ice.
Daniela arrived at the hospital just before dawn, her makeup immaculate and her tears already in place.
— Rodrigo, this is absurd. That girl is after money. Emiliano always hated me.
He looked at her as though he were seeing a stranger.
— The kitchen cameras recorded everything.
Daniela’s expression shifted for barely a second. That was enough.
— You don’t know what you’re saying.
— Yes, I do. For the first time in months, I know exactly what I’m saying.
Two police officers came through the hallway. Daniela stepped back.
— Rodrigo, please. I’m your wife.
“No,” he said. “You were the woman who turned my son’s suffering into a strategy.”
When they placed the handcuffs on her, Daniela began screaming that Lucía was a scheming employee, that Emiliano was mentally ill, that the whole thing was a setup.
But Emiliano, from his hospital bed, barely opened his eyes and asked:
— Has she gone?
Rodrigo came to him, devastated.
— Yes, son. She’s gone.
Emiliano looked at him with a sadness too heavy for a child to carry.
— Do you believe me now?
Rodrigo could not answer.
Because the full truth had not yet come out — and the worst of it was hidden in a drawer no one had opened.
