My stomach clenched. He knew my passwords. He knew my routines. He knew my weaknesses. Suddenly, I understood why, in recent months, he had insisted so much that I sign “unimportant” papers, why he wanted to sell the house, and why he isolated me from my friends by claiming I was sensitive and confused.
Then Lucía said something that left me utterly speechless.
“Once we’re finished with the transfer, you’ll have to admit her to the clinic. If she’s still here, she might find out.”
And at that moment, Javier responded with a coldness I had never heard from him before:
“If she doesn’t sign willingly tomorrow, we’ll make it look like a mental breakdown.”
I had to make a superhuman effort not to sit up abruptly. My heart was pounding so hard I thought they could hear it through the mattress. I remained motionless, breathing slowly, while they continued rummaging through my belongings. Javier pulled a blue folder from the back of the closet and let out a short, sharp laugh.
“Here it is,” he said.
Lucía approached him immediately. “Is that the deed?”
“No, but it’s even better,” he replied. “An old power of attorney, a copy of the life insurance policy, and the bank statements. With these, we can make a lot of progress.”
I didn’t know what hurt more: the fear or the humiliation. Javier hadn’t just been drugging me; he’d been plotting to strip me of everything for quite some time. And Lucía, whom I’d helped financially more than once, was deep in the middle of it. I remembered little things that had previously seemed insignificant: calls that would drop as soon as I entered the room, family gatherings I was told not to attend because I “needed to rest,” strange activity on the joint account, and that comment Javier had made two weeks earlier: “Sometimes you don’t even know what you’re doing because you’re so tired.” It wasn’t a sympathetic observation. It was a rehearsal for his alibi.
