She had been fastening an earring.
“Can you do it? You know my code.”
He had smiled.
“Of course.”
She had thought nothing of it.
She closed her eyes.
“He had access to my phone.”
Lucía nodded.
“And probably more than once.”
“But the baby?”
Lucía pulled a second folder closer.
“This is where it gets uglier.”
She opened an email chain.
Nicolás had been communicating with a family-law consultant for almost five months.
Not under his own name.
Under the name N. Grant.
Valeria read the messages in silence.
The language was cold.
Clinical.
They discussed marital assets.
Her work schedule.
The penthouse.
The fact that Valeria had purchased it before the marriage.
Her pregnancy.
One message asked what evidence would be needed to establish that a mother posed an “emotional stability concern” after childbirth.
Another asked whether angry behavior caught on video could support an emergency custody request.
Valeria felt physically sick.
“He was planning to leave me.”
Lucía shook her head.
“That would have been the simple version.”
She scrolled farther.
The plan was not merely divorce.
Nicolás believed that once the baby was born, Valeria would be vulnerable.
Exhausted.
Recovering.
Distracted.
The emails discussed creating a record of “volatile behavior” before delivery.
