Chapter 3
Rosa didn't move. "No, ma'am."
"Then remember your place."
The room on screen went silent. Sofia reached for Camila's hand. I stared at that small gesture longer than I stared at anything else in that footage, because it told me everything Patricia's whispering had been designed to hide. This had happened before. My daughters already knew how to brace for it.
I felt sick. For months, Patricia had been telling me Rosa was the danger in my house. I had never once asked myself why my daughters had gotten quieter. Why they hugged me a little too tightly at the door lately, like they were storing something up. Why the house had started feeling colder long before I let myself admit it.
I watched three more days of footage that Ruben pulled from the archive without needing to be asked twice. Patricia slapping a wooden spoon against the kitchen counter to make Camila stop crying faster. Patricia locking Sofia out of the playroom for an hour because she'd left a coloring book on the ottoman. Patricia telling both girls, in a voice honeyed enough to fool anyone who wasn't looking directly at a screen, that if they told their father anything, he would stop loving them the way he used to love their mother before she died.
That was the sentence that finished whatever restraint I had left.
I didn't wait for the fake trip to end. I walked out of that monitoring room, through the house, and into the living room, where Patricia was arranging fresh lilies in a crystal vase like she hadn't spent the morning terrorizing two children who trusted her by default because I had put a ring on her finger.
She turned, startled, then recovered into her practiced smile. "Emiliano? I thought you were in Geneva."
"I was never in Geneva." I set my phone on the table, the recorded footage already queued and playing, Patricia's own voice filling the room. What did I tell you about sitting there. Remember your place. If you tell your father, he'll stop loving you.
Her face drained of every ounce of composure she'd built her entire personality around. "Emiliano, that's not what it looked like, I was disciplining them, children need structure—"
"Rosa," I said, without looking away from Patricia, "come here, please."
Rosa appeared in the doorway, cautious, unsure why she'd been summoned, her hands still faintly damp from the kitchen sink.
May you like
"For three years," I said, "you have cared for my daughters with more patience and honesty than anyone in this house, including me. I let a woman who has known them for four months convince me you were the threat." I turned to Patricia. "You have one hour to pack. Ruben will supervise. If anything of mine or my daughters' leaves this house that doesn't belong to you, I will press charges personally, and I have three days of footage that will make sure a judge believes every word."
"You can't do this," Patricia said, her voice cracking for the first time since I'd met her. "I'm your fiancée."
