“He told his staff he was staying at a hotel after the dinner.”
But Mariana remembered.
Rodrigo stumbling through the front door just before midnight.
His tie crooked.
His words slurred.
She had asked why he hadn’t stayed at the hotel if he was that drunk.
He had waved her away and collapsed in the guest room because they had argued.
“He changed his plans,” Mariana said.
“Apparently.”
“And Tomás didn’t know.”
“That is one possibility.”
The room seemed to shrink around her.
Suddenly the worst part of the fire was not the heat she remembered.
It was the possibility that Rodrigo had known something would happen.
That he had planned to be somewhere else.
“What about me?”
Her voice came out almost inaudibly.
Teresa looked at her.
“What about you?”
“If Rodrigo wasn’t supposed to be home…”
She forced herself to finish.
“…where was I supposed to be?”
Nobody spoke.
Mariana’s mother had invited her to sleep at her parents’ house that evening.
Mariana had almost gone.
She stayed because Rodrigo had texted her at 8:16.
Don’t wait up. I’ll be at the hotel.
The house would have been empty if Mariana had accepted her mother’s invitation.
Maybe that had been the plan.
An empty house.
A fire.
Destroyed records.
An insurance claim.
Then Rodrigo, drunk and careless, had changed everything by coming home.
And Mariana had nearly died saving him from his own scheme.
She covered her mouth with her good hand.
Jorge stood behind her chair.
His hand settled gently on her shoulder.
“Enough for today.”
“No.”
Mariana lowered her hand.
“I want everything.”
Teresa studied her, then nodded.
There was more.
Prisma Norte had been in serious financial trouble for almost a year.
Rodrigo had hidden it from Mariana.
Three major clients had left.
Two former employees claimed invoices had been altered.
A vendor that had received hundreds of thousands of pesos from Prisma Norte was registered to the brother-in-law of Tomás Rocha.
Then came the detail that made Mariana laugh once, without humor.
Rodrigo had told her for months that business was booming.
He had even criticized her medical costs.
“You have no idea what this is doing to our finances,” he had said after her second surgery.
But while Mariana lay in a hospital bed because she had dragged him through fire, Rodrigo had been trying to collect millions from the same fire.
Elisa turned to her.
“I need to ask you something about the divorce papers.”
Mariana looked at her.
“What?”
“Did he insist that you sign immediately?”
“Yes.”
“Did he explain the debt section?”
“No.”
Elisa opened the petition they had brought from home.
“I read it while you were speaking with Teresa.”
She tapped a paragraph.
“This agreement asks each spouse to assume responsibility for obligations issued in his or her name.”
“That sounds normal.”
“It can be.”
Elisa looked directly at her.
“But I want a full credit report before you sign anything.”
They obtained one the next morning.
Mariana found three accounts she had never opened.
