Chapter 5 - What Karina Hid
The tunnel beneath my father’s house ended behind a garden wall three properties away.
Officer Salazar shoved me through a rusted metal hatch into an explosion of sunlight, then followed with his weapon drawn and his face streaked with dust. Behind us, somewhere underground, a crash echoed. Then shouting. Then a single gunshot.
I tried to run back.
Salazar caught me around the chest.
“No.”
“Fuentes is in there!”
“She told me to get you out.”
“She’ll be killed.”
“She knew that when she stayed.”
Another shout came from the direction of the old house. Tires screeched. A dog began barking. Salazar dragged me through a neighbor’s overgrown garden and out to the street, where one of the patrol cars had repositioned near the corner.
“Get in.”
I did, because shock had turned my limbs stupid.
As the car pulled away, I looked back and saw smoke curling from one of the basement windows.
Not fire.
Smoke.
A distraction.
A cover.
A way to destroy evidence.
“My father’s tapes,” I said.
Salazar’s jaw tightened. “Fuentes had one in her pocket.”
The one labeled RODRIGO — LAST WEEK.
A strange, terrible relief moved through me.
Then his radio came alive.
“Detective Fuentes secure. Suspects fled northbound. Repeat, Fuentes secure.”
I dropped my head into my hands.
For one breath, I let myself feel gratitude.
Then Salazar’s radio cracked again.
“Female suspect located near Avenida Miguel Ángel. Possible Karina Mendoza Ruiz. Units responding.”
My head snapped up.
“She’s there?”
Salazar did not answer. He accelerated.
They found Karina in a church courtyard fifteen minutes later.
She was sitting on the steps beneath a statue of the Virgin, her beige coat folded beside her, my visitor badge still clipped to the lapel. Her hair had come loose. There was blood on one sleeve, though I couldn’t tell if it was hers.
Two officers stood near her, but she wasn’t trying to run.
When she saw me step out of the patrol car, something changed in her face.
Not guilt.
Not fear.
Sorrow.
That was worse.
“Daniel,” she said.
I stopped ten feet away.
The space between us felt larger than every year we had slept in the same bed.
Fuentes arrived seconds later in another car, coughing, soot on her cheek, the cassette tape clenched in one hand. Her eyes moved from Karina to me.
“You don’t have to speak to her.”
Karina gave a small, broken laugh.
“He does.”
“No,” Fuentes said. “He really doesn’t.”
Karina ignored her.
“My father is going to say I poisoned your mother.”
“Did you?”
She flinched.
That answer told me more than any confession could have.
“I didn’t know at first,” she whispered.
“At first?”
Her eyes filled, but no tears fell.
“When we met, I knew who you were. I knew about the land. My father told me your mother was unstable, that she had stolen property from my grandfather, that your family had built its comfort on a lie. He said getting close to you was justice.”
I felt my stomach turn.
“So you did.”
“I was twenty-three. He had controlled everything my entire life. I thought I was proving myself.”
“You married me as an assignment.”
Her silence was a yes.
Behind me, Fuentes said quietly, “Careful, Daniel.”
But I couldn’t be careful.
I had been careful for seven years. Careful with my wife’s moods. Careful with her father’s disdain. Careful with my mother’s discomfort around the Mendoza family, which Karina had always dismissed as old bitterness.
“I loved you,” I said.
Karina finally looked away.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t get to say that like it hurts you too.”
“It did hurt me.”
I laughed once, empty and sharp.
“You poisoned my mother.”
Her face collapsed.
“I didn’t give her the digoxin.”
“But you brought it.”
Karina covered her mouth.
Fuentes stepped forward. “Karina Mendoza Ruiz, I’m placing you under arrest for attempted murder, conspiracy—”
“No,” Karina said quickly. “Listen to me. Please. Daniel, please.”
“You can talk at the station.”
“If you take me there, my father will bury this before sunset.”
Fuentes’s expression did not change, but I saw her listening.
Karina reached slowly into her pocket.
Both officers raised their weapons.
She froze.
“It’s just a drive,” she said. “A USB drive. It has recordings. Transfers. Emails. Proof that my father ordered everything.”
“Put it on the ground,” Fuentes said.
Karina obeyed.
Fuentes nodded to Salazar, who collected it with a gloved hand.
Karina looked at me again.
“Your mother was supposed to die in her sleep three weeks from now, after signing a revised medical power of attorney and a property trust amendment. I delayed it. I kept telling them she was too weak, that you were suspicious, that the timing was wrong.”
The courtyard seemed to spin around me.
“Do you want credit for delaying murder?”
“No. I want you to understand why she’s still alive.”
I stepped closer despite myself.
“What changed?”
Karina’s eyes moved to my left hand.
My wedding ring.
Then back to my face.
“She asked me if I loved you.”
I stopped.
“Your mother knew?” I asked.
“She knew before you did. Maybe before I did.”
A police siren wailed somewhere nearby.
Karina’s voice dropped.
“She told me love doesn’t erase what we choose. Then she said if I had any soul left, I would stop being my father’s daughter.”
My mother, dying, still fighting.
Still seeing people more clearly than I ever had.
Karina swallowed.
“So I tried. I stole the files. I planned to give them to you after she stabilized. But Vega found out. My father ordered me to finish it immediately. At the hospital, I brought the syringe because I thought if I refused in front of them, they would send someone else.”
“You expect me to believe you went there to save her?”
“No.” Her voice broke. “I expect you to hate me. But I need you alive long enough to beat him.”
Fuentes stepped between us.
“That drive better be real.”
“It is.”
“Then you can explain it in custody.”
Karina nodded.
As Fuentes cuffed her, Karina looked over the detective’s shoulder at me.
“My father has a judge.”
Fuentes paused.
Karina continued, faster now.
“Judge Carrillo. Probate court. He signed sealed orders before they were filed. They were going to have your mother declared incompetent by Monday, transfer her trust authority to me, and force a sale to Mendoza Urban through a shell company.”
Monday.
Three days away.
Fuentes turned to Salazar. “Call the prosecutor. Now.”
Karina’s eyes stayed on mine.
“And Daniel?”
I hated that part of me still recognized the way she said my name.
“What?”
“My father doesn’t just want the land anymore.”
“What does he want?”
She looked toward the street, where more police cars were arriving.
“He wants to erase the only living proof that his family murdered yours.”
May you like
The meaning settled between us.
Me.
