PART 2
In the Salazar house, time didn't heal anything. It only taught you to endure.
Valeria spent the next three days locked in her room. There was no hospital. No X-rays. No real painkillers. Just an old bandage, a damp towel, and the pain throbbing in her legs as if they were on fire. From her bed, she listened to life going on downstairs with unbearable normalcy: the silverware on the table, the television on, Fernanda's laughter, her mother's heels clicking across the dining room floor.
They weren't acting as if they had hurt a teenager.
They were acting as if they had hidden a problem where no one could see it.
Eventually, Valeria learned to walk again, but she never did it properly. Climbing stairs was torture. The cold stung her knees like a constant reminder. Rogelio called it "building character." Fernanda made a joke of it. Sometimes, when there were visitors, she would mimic their walk and then smile as if she were just playing.
By eighteen, Valeria barely spoke anymore. She answered only when necessary, smiled when appropriate, and feigned impeccable obedience. She had understood that crying only fed her family. So she stopped.
The truth dawned on her one afternoon when she overheard Fernanda talking on the phone in her dressing room.
“The cripple isn’t going to get anything,” she said, laughing. “Everything was arranged years ago. The house, the accounts, the apartment in Valle, even my mother’s foundation… everything is in my name. She doesn’t count anymore.”
Valeria froze behind the door.
That’s when she understood it hadn’t been just cruelty.
There was ulterior motive.
They wanted to humiliate her, break her, and erase her from the future all at once.
From that day on, she stopped feeling like a victim. She became patient.
She began sneaking into her father's office at night. She photographed deeds, strange transfers, signatures that didn't match, transactions in offshore accounts, and the names of shell companies. She did it slowly, like someone learning to breathe underwater.
Then she discovered the worst.
Her mother's supposed charitable foundation, the one Lucía posed with in society magazines, helping children and women, was a front. The money came in through donations and was laundered through Rogelio's construction companies.
Everything was documented.
Everything.
To raise money and escape, Valeria got a night job at a warehouse in Guadalupe using her middle name. She studied accounting and law online. She saved every penny. She endured humiliations without reacting. She learned to wait.
At twenty-one, almost nothing remained of the little girl who had crawled around the yard. She stored the evidence in a safe deposit box far from Monterrey and began.
She didn't threaten anyone.
She asked for nothing.
She simply dropped the truth where it would hurt the most.
Reporters.
Tax authorities.
Donors.
Partners.
Within weeks, the phone at the mansion rang nonstop. Rogelio was yelling. Lucía's face paled. Fernanda, upon discovering that almost everything was in her name, panicked, realizing she would be the first to answer.
And when the chaos reached its peak, Valeria left that house with a small suitcase, an empty envelope, and a tranquility she had never known before.
She disappeared.
Months later, she returned to Monterrey only once. She entered the marble kitchen where, so many years before, her voice had been stolen, and placed a red brick on the counter. Next to it, she placed a photo of herself when she was fifteen. On the back was a single phrase.
"They kept everything, except me."
Rogelio glared at her. Lucía couldn't speak. Fernanda started crying, as she always did when she felt cornered.
Then he spat out a question that froze the entire kitchen:
“What do you want from us?”
Valeria’s response was so cold that neither of them breathed the same way again.
And what she said next can only be understood in Part 3.
