The photo showed Beatriz, already ill, sitting on the bed. Itzel was beside her. In Beatriz’s arms slept a baby girl: Ainara. Beatriz smiled as if this child were a gift that life had allowed her to hold before leaving.
Christopher sat on the bed and cried for the first time in years.
After that, he was never the same again.
She called Catalina Vergara, her lawyer, and asked her to arrive with auditors that same afternoon. She also ordered that Itzel be given legal protection. When Catalina crossed the gate of Casa Velavista with her team, Hortensia understood that something had been broken forever.
But the secrets were just beginning.
Aleida, the cook, appeared with a tin box. Inside, she kept what appeared to be a recipe book. Each recipe had dates and numbers written in the margin. For years, she had recorded clandestine visits, boxes brought in through the service entrance, and meals prepared for undeclared meetings. Her notes matched the false payments in the folders.
—His wife taught me to keep a backup notebook—Aleida told Cristóbal. —She told me that if one day no one believed me, my notebook would.
The audit revealed the unforgivable: Hortensia had embezzled money from an educational trust that Beatriz had set up for Ainara. The little girl, the housekeeper’s daughter whom everyone had treated as « the staff’s child, » was Beatriz’s ward. The woman who couldn’t have children of her own had secured the little girl’s future with her own assets.
And Hortensia had stolen it.
When Itzel entered the main hall with Ainara by the hand, everyone fell silent. The little girl gazed at the high ceilings, the antique paintings, the enormous fireplace, as if she had entered a forbidden world.
Christopher knelt before her.
—Hello, Ainara. I’m Cristóbal.
« I know him, » the girl said. « My mom has a picture of you with the lady who went to heaven. »
Christopher swallowed hard.
—That lady’s name was Beatriz. And she loved you very much.
Ainara smiled shyly.
—My mom says she used to sing to me when I was a baby.
Hortensia looked away.
Then Doña Remedios arrived, an elderly neighbor who had been a friend of Cristóbal’s mother and Beatriz. She carried a sealed envelope. Inside were notarized documents: Ainara’s trust agreement, signed by Beatriz before she died, and a letter.