PART 2
A week after surgery, as soon as I could walk down the hospital corridor on my own, I called Richard Vance — my family’s estate attorney, who’d managed our holdings long before Alejandro ever entered the picture.
I laid out everything.
There was a long, heavy pause on the line.
“Camila, I’ll need your formal authorization for three things right away,” Richard said crisply. “Freeze the monthly allowance to your in-laws, remove Alejandro as an authorized user on all your main credit accounts, and split the joint operational funds immediately.”
“Do it today.”
“And the downtown condo?”
“Protect my assets,” I said. “No illegal lock-out — we do this strictly by the book.”
By nine the next morning, Alejandro’s platinum card couldn’t even buy him a coffee.
He called me screaming into the phone. “What did you do to my accounts?!”
“Your accounts, Alejandro?”
“Don’t play dumb! I’m at a dealership trying to buy Claudia an SUV and the card got declined!”
“Maybe try paying with your own salary,” I said quietly.
He hurled a string of insults and hung up.
Two hours later, Claudia walked into my hospital room in a hot-pink designer dress, an expensive handbag, no flowers.
“Well, look at you — you actually survived,” she said, dripping with fake sweetness. “How awkward.”
She sat in the armchair like she owned the room.
“Alejandro told me you signed the papers. Thank you, Camila. We can finally be a real family.”
She held her phone up to my face — a photo of her, Alejandro, and a toddler at a Miami resort. Alejandro was wearing the gold watch I’d bought him for our tenth anniversary.
“Look at him,” she gloated. “He was never really happy with you. You were a burden. Now he’s got a real woman and a son.”
I let her talk, keeping my face blank.
Then she overplayed her hand.
“Alejandro makes incredible money. He told me he’s getting promoted to VP next month. We’re already planning to move permanently into your — well, his — downtown condo.”
I nearly smiled.
Before leaving, she added one last dig: “Oh, and this weekend Alejandro and I are taking the baby to your parents’ grave. He wants to introduce us as his new family at the headstone.”
That hit a nerve. My late parents were sacred to me, and the thought of them being used as a stage prop for her cheap victory lap chilled me.
The second Claudia left, I called Father Thomas, a longtime family friend who oversaw the parish beside the cemetery. I explained the situation, and he assured me no one would be allowed to turn my parents’ resting place into a spectacle.
That afternoon, Alejandro called me on video.
Behind him, my downtown living room looked like a war zone. My clothes were being stuffed into trash bags. My antique books were piled on the floor. Claudia stood in front of a mirror trying on one of my cashmere coats.
My in-laws stood beside them.
“Finally clearing out your junk,” Alejandro sneered into the camera. “This place needs a younger, more vibrant woman.”
My mother-in-law leaned into frame. “Camila, you aren’t family anymore. Claudia actually gave us a grandson.”
Alejandro reached down and lifted a wooden keepsake box — my parents’ photo albums, my late father’s vintage pocket watch inside.
“This junk’s going straight to the dumpster,” he laughed.
“Don’t you dare touch those,” I said quietly.
All four of them laughed, and the call went dark.
I was shaking when Richard Vance walked into my room ten minutes later with a thick grey folder.
“A few developments, Camila,” Richard said. “This morning Alejandro tried presenting himself as sole owner of one of your commercial buildings to secure an unauthorized business loan. His firm’s compliance department has already opened an internal investigation.”
“How could he be that stupid?”
“Because he’s spent fifteen years convincing himself everything he touched was his,” Richard said.
He set the file on my lap. “But that’s not the biggest thing we found.”
He pulled out a certified legal document.
“We ran a full background check on Claudia since she’s now part of the asset dispute. There’s an active paternity and child-support case filed in Cook County eight months ago. A certified DNA report is on record.”
A chill ran through me. “The baby?”
Richard nodded. “Yes.”
“And Alejandro?”
He looked at me, dead serious. “Alejandro isn’t the biological father.”
