PART 1
“I saw your wife pulling the baby… she’s not even fit to be a mother,” my mom told me on the phone, while I was locked in my office at two in the morning.
My name is Alejandro Cárdenas. I work at a financial firm in Santa Fe, one of those places where people brag about not sleeping, as if ruining their lives were some kind of badge of honor. That night I stayed up reviewing an urgent contract for a client in Monterrey. My wife, Mariana, was at home with our three-month-old baby, Mateo, and with my mother, Teresa, who had moved in “temporarily” to help us after the birth.
At first, I thought it was a blessing. My mom had always been strong, organized, one of those women who, at family meals, controlled even who sat next to whom. Mariana, on the other hand, had been fading away for weeks. Before, she was an architect, cheerful, with a strong personality. After Mateo was born, she started walking as if she were asking permission to exist.
“It’s postpartum exhaustion,” my mom would tell me.
“Mariana isn’t ready for a house like this,” she’d repeat.
I believed her. And that still hurts.
Our baby would cry every time I left the house in Lomas de Chapultepec. It wasn’t normal crying. It was like something was breaking the moment I closed the door. Mariana said she was exhausted, that she couldn’t take it anymore, but when I asked her what was wrong, she’d look down.
A week earlier, I’d installed a hidden monitor in Mateo’s room. Not to spy on them, I told myself. To protect them. It was a small camera, hidden inside a wooden owl I’d bought in Coyoacán. I just wanted to understand why my son was crying so much.
At 2:07 a.m., while my mom was still badmouthing Mariana on the phone, I got a motion alert.
I opened the app.
The screen showed the baby’s room, barely lit by a yellow lamp. Mariana sat by the crib, disheveled, her eyes red, holding Mateo. She looked devastated.
Then my mother came in.
She didn’t knock. She pushed open the door angrily.
“Crying again?” she spat. “You live off my son, you eat in this house, you use his money, and you still have the nerve to complain.”
Mariana didn’t answer. She just hugged the baby tighter.
“Mateo has a fever, Teresa. I need to call the pediatrician.”
“You’re not calling anyone!” my mother yelled. “If Alejandro knew how useless you are, he would have fired you already.”
I felt the blood drain from my feet.
Then I saw something I’ll never forget.
My mother came closer, reached into Mariana’s hair, and yanked it so hard my wife doubled over. Mateo started crying desperately. Mariana didn’t scream. She didn’t fight back. She just closed her eyes, like someone who had already learned that resisting was worse.
My mother whispered in her ear:
“I’m going to prove to my son today that you’re crazy.”
And she pulled a small, unlabeled bottle out of her bag.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But the worst was yet to come…
