Chapter 4
Chapter 4: The Husband's Return
When the door finally unlocked and Sebastián returned, the room had been perfectly reset. The nurses were gone. Dr. Salgado was adjusting an IV drip. Rebeca was sitting elegantly in a visitor's chair, and Octavio was casually holding his leather folder as if he had just won a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. And practically, he had.
Sebastián walked over to the bed, looking at the documents resting on the tray. He looked down at his wife, who was breathing heavily, her face pale and covered in a sheen of cold sweat.
"You... you signed these, right?" Sebastián asked, his voice wavering, desperate to believe the sanitized version of reality his family had fed him.
Valeria let out a small, broken laugh. "That is what they want you to believe."
With a sudden surge of strength, she reached down and violently yanked the hospital blanket back, exposing her bare legs.
Sebastián physically recoiled. His face drained of all color. From her ankles to her upper thighs, her skin was a canvas of dark, violent contusions.
Before he could process the horror, Valeria lunged forward and gripped his wrist with terrifying strength.
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"Don't let them take my baby," she hissed, her eyes burning into his soul.
For the first time in three years of marriage, the thick veil of denial fell from Sebastián’s eyes. He looked at the bruises, then at his mother, then at his cousin. He finally seemed to understand that the monster hiding in his family could destroy them all.
