But the plate…
One number was wrong.
His blood went cold.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
Abril swallowed hard.
“Yesterday, behind the greenhouse, I heard your wife talking to a man.”
Santiago stopped breathing.
“She said you wouldn’t notice because you always walk while looking at your phone. They said they would switch the car today. They said if you got inside, you would never make it to the airport.”
Santiago felt something sharp hit his chest.
“Are you saying Valeria is involved in this?”
Abril looked him straight in the eyes.
“Yes, sir.”
His voice hardened.
“Do you understand how serious it is to accuse my wife of something like that?”
Abril reached into her pocket and pulled out an old cellphone.
“That’s why I recorded it on my dad’s phone.”
Before she could play the recording, Santiago’s phone rang.
The name on the screen made his stomach twist.
Valeria.
His wife.
He answered.
“Where are you, my love?” she asked, her voice soft and perfect. “The driver says you still haven’t come out. You’re going to miss your flight.”
Santiago looked at the black car outside the gate.
“I’m coming,” he said.
“Hurry,” Valeria replied. “That meeting is important.”
“I know.”
He ended the call slowly.
Then he stood up.
“I have to go.”
Abril grabbed his hand again.
This time, she held on with desperate strength.
“Sir, if I’m wrong, you can fire my father. We’ll leave today. But if I’m right and you get into that car…”
Her voice trembled.
“You won’t come back.”
Santiago froze.
“What else did you hear?”
Abril’s eyes filled with tears.
“They said they would take your phone and wallet. They said they would drive you somewhere empty. They said they would leave you without food until you were too weak to fight.”
Santiago’s throat tightened.
“And then?”
Abril lowered her voice.
“Everyone would think you disappeared. And after that, the twenty-million-dollar life insurance would go to your wife.”
Santiago wanted to laugh.
He wanted to say it was impossible.
He wanted to call the whole thing insane.
Valeria had been with him before the fortune.
Before the mansion.
Before the company.
Back when they lived in a small apartment in Narvarte and he ate cold tacos at the office just to save money.
She knew the man he had been before everyone called him powerful.
She could not be planning this.
She could not.
But Abril pointed toward the garden.
“Come,” she whispered. “There’s something you need to see.”
She led him low behind the hedge, past the side path, toward the greenhouse.
Behind the bougainvillea, Santiago saw her.
Valeria.
His wife.
She was walking beside a younger man in an expensive shirt, the kind of man who looked like debt hidden under cologne.
Then Valeria touched his face.
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