You sit in the leather chair outside the notary’s office with your hands folded so tightly in your lap that your knuckles ache.
The building on Presidente Masaryk is all polished stone, tinted glass, and quiet money. A receptionist in a cream blouse glides past carrying a silver tray with coffee cups no one touches. Across from you, Valeria sits in a fitted black dress, ankles crossed, face composed in that way wealthy women practice in mirrors until grief becomes an accessory.yes
No one looking at her would guess what she whispered at the funeral.
No one looking at you would guess how close you came to slapping her across the face.
But you can still hear it, every syllable cold against your ear. María, don’t get your hopes up. Alejandro took care of everything. You won’t see a dime of his $4.5 million.
You hadn’t cared about the money until she said it like that.
That was the ugly truth you hated admitting to yourself. If the will had cut you out with kindness, you might have grieved and gone home to your little apartment in Iztapalapa and told yourself that love had never needed legal proof. But Valeria had said it with delight, with the smug little smile of someone who believed you were already beneath the floorboards, buried and irrelevant before the casket had even cooled.
So now you sit there in the notary’s waiting room with your black handbag in your lap and your son’s voice in your memory, and for the first time since the hospital, grief has company.
Suspicion.
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