Chapter 3 - The Price of Honesty
Life inside the Beltrán mansion was a theater of the absurd.
I cared for Valentina, who remained fragile and haunted by the death of her husband.
She was oblivious to the fact that her brother was the architect of the same violence that had taken her love.
She confided in me, her trust a heavy, corrosive thing that I wasn't sure I could carry.
"Nicolás does what he has to for us," she whispered.
I didn't say a word.
I couldn't tell her that her brother was the one pulling the strings of the puppet show she lived in.
Nicolás was everywhere.
He would appear in the hallway, his silence a constant, pressing weight.
He would watch me with an intensity that made my skin itch.
The pressure was mounting.
Sofía’s surgery date was approaching.
I caught glimpses of things I wasn't meant to see: a truck leaving at 3:00 a.m. with unmarked crates, a ledger on a desk that contained names of missing people.
One night, I found a burner phone hidden in my room.
It wasn't mine.
I knew, with a sudden, icy clarity, that someone was trying to set me up.
I stood in the middle of my room, the device in my palm.
I realized that I was in a war where the front lines were everywhere.
I wasn't just a nurse anymore.
I was a player, whether I liked it or not.
I decided to use the phone, not to contact the rivals, but to document everything.
May you like
I was becoming the very thing I despised.
Yet, the memory of Sofía’s pale, struggling face was the fuel for my survival.
