Chapter 4: Two Years of Poison
Nobody called security.
Nobody left.
The 300 guests who had come to celebrate a wedding sat in perfect stillness and watched a family come apart.
Marco asked Dr.
Reyes to stay.
She stood to one side, the sealed bag in her hand, waiting.
Rodrigo sat down quietly at an empty chair near the back of the head table.
He had said what he came to say.
The rest belonged to Marco.
Sylvia had not moved from the center of the room.
She was still composed, in the way that a structure is composed right before the supports give way — everything in place, nothing actually holding.
"Sit down, Mother."
Marco's voice was the same tone he had used with her before.
Quiet.
Final.
She sat.
He pulled a chair around and sat directly across from her, close enough that the conversation was almost private, but not quite.
In a room that silent, every word carried.
"The vial first," he said.
"Then we talk about Father."
"I want a lawyer present before—"
"You are at my wedding.
You are not under arrest.
You are my mother, and I am asking you a question." He leaned forward slightly.
"What were you trying to do to Beatriz tonight?"
Sylvia's eyes moved to me.
I was standing two steps behind Marco.
I did not sit down.
"I was protecting you," she said.
"From what?"
"From her." She said it simply, as if it explained everything.
"From what she is.
From what she wants.
You are worth more than she will ever understand, Marco.
Everything your father built, everything I protected for you — she would spend it, share it, give it away to her family.
I have watched women like her my entire life."
"Women like her," Marco repeated.
"Ambitious.
Calculating.
She knew exactly what she was doing when she met you."
Marco looked at me over his shoulder.
Not for reassurance.
He was measuring something.
I kept my face still.
"Beatriz knew I existed before she knew my last name," Marco said, turning back.
"I didn't tell her who my family was until our fourth month together.
That was my choice.
Not hers."
Sylvia's expression shifted slightly.
She hadn't known that.
"The sedative," Marco said.
"What was supposed to happen?"
A pause.
"She would have felt unwell," Sylvia said.
"She would have needed to rest.
The wedding night would have been—" She stopped.
"Ruined," I said.
She looked at me.
"Postponed."
"And the marriage?" Marco asked.
"I would have had more time."
"Time to do what?"
Her chin lifted slightly.
"Time to make you see clearly."
Marco sat back.
He pressed one hand flat against the table.
"You have had two years," he said.
"Two years of dinners where you asked her questions designed to make her feel small.
Two years of phone calls to me after every time we spent time with her family.
Two years of telling me she was temporary." His voice stayed level.
"How much more time did you think you needed?"
Sylvia looked away from him for the first time.
"Tell me about Father," Marco said.
"That is not the same conversation."
"I think it is exactly the same conversation." He picked up the envelope from the table.
"Dr.
Alcantara says he was removed from Father's case without explanation two days before he d*ed.
He says he was preparing to recommend additional testing because Father's symptoms had changed in a way he did not think was consistent with cardiac deterioration." Marco set the page on the table facing her.
"He says he told you this directly."
Sylvia said nothing.
"Did he tell you that?"
"Doctors speculate.
It's what they do when they want to justify more billing."
"He retired eleven years ago.
He sent this statement with no request for compensation." Marco's hand came down on the page, not violently, just firmly.
"Did he tell you Father's symptoms had changed?"
A long silence.
"Yes," she said finally.
"And you removed him from the case."
"I brought in three other specialists."
"Specialists you selected."
"Of course I selected them.
I was his wife.
That was my right."
"And the toxicology report Rodrigo mentioned?"
Sylvia's eyes moved briefly to Rodrigo, then back.
"There was nothing in that report worth keeping."
"Then why was it sealed?"
She folded her hands in her lap.
"Mother." Marco's voice broke, just slightly, on the word.
Just enough.
"Did you hurt Father?"
The room was so quiet I could hear the candles.
Sylvia looked at her son for a long moment.
"Everything I have done," she said carefully, "has been for this family."
It wasn't a denial.
Marco heard it the same way I did.
His hand, still flat on the table, curled slowly into a fist.
Then his phone buzzed again.
He looked down at the screen.
His face went completely still.
He turned the phone so I could see the message.
It was from a number I didn't recognize.
May you like
*She did the same thing to the first one.
Ask her about the woman before your mother.*
