You look back at the screen. Fernando Castillo’s face glows blue in the light of the old laptop, distant and composed, a man who should belong to guarded elevators and private dining rooms, not midnight buses and a stranger’s contractions. “He helped me because he was decent,” you murmur. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
Sofía sets the coffee down beside the ultrasound. “You know what means something? Alejandro filed the divorce in forty-eight hours and already booked interviews to talk about healing, growth, and new beginnings.” Her mouth twists. “Men only move that fast when they’re protecting more than their image.”
That gets your attention.
Sofía reaches into her bag and slides a folder onto the bed. You open it with numb fingers and see photocopies, highlighted lines, transaction sheets, and one page from an upcoming shareholder packet for Torres Medical Holdings. Alejandro’s company. The company everyone says he built. The company you spent four years quietly stabilizing while he posed at conferences and accepted praise for “vision.”
“He’s trying to close the Monterrey expansion next month,” Sofía says. “And he’s doing it using assets tied to the Cruz licensing agreement.”
You look up. “My father’s agreement?”
She nods.
Your father’s tiny biomedical software firm had been worth very little when you inherited it and worth much more after you spent nights and weekends rewriting its hospital logistics platform while Alejandro took credit for “guiding” the transition. When Torres Medical absorbed the technology, you agreed to a licensing structure instead of a full sale because your father had always warned you not to hand away the roots of something just because a man promised to grow the tree prettier. Alejandro smiled through that negotiation. He also spent three years pretending the revenue stream was too small to matter.
Now the numbers on the page tell a different story.
“He needs your signature to fully transfer the licensing rights before the merger closes,” Sofía says. “Your divorce took care of the marriage. It did not give him what he really wants.”
