“They needed footage of you losing control. Tonight was planned.”
Valeria did not answer.
She swung her legs carefully off the hospital bed and reached for the plastic bag containing the clothes she had been wearing.
“Ma’am, you should stay seated,” the nurse said.
“I’m not leaving.”
Valeria pulled out the damaged sweater.
There it was.
A small burned hole near the curve of her abdomen.
The sight made her hands shake, but she forced herself to photograph it again under the bright hospital lights.
Then she photographed the red mark beneath it.
Not because she wanted to remember.
Because she never wanted anyone else to decide what had happened that night.
The police officer taking her statement looked up.
“Do you want to add something?”
“Yes.”
Valeria handed him the phone.
“I believe the assault may have been planned.”
The officer’s expression changed.
Within forty minutes, Lucía Herrera arrived at the hospital carrying a laptop, two folders and the kind of expression Valeria had seen only twice during the twelve years they had known each other.
Lucía was furious.
She hugged Valeria carefully.
Then she looked at her stomach.
“How is the baby?”
“Stable.”
“And you?”
Valeria almost said fine.
Instead, she shook her head.
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s a better answer.”
They sat beside the hospital window while fireworks continued exploding over Mexico City as if somewhere outside that room the new year were still something worth celebrating.
Lucía opened her laptop.
“I need you to see this before we decide our next move.”
