Eduardo felt the room begin to spin.

For a second he thought he was still sick.

That the fever had returned.

That it was all a hallucination born of tiredness, of the wedding wine, of the weight of so many weeks fighting against the world for that woman.

But not.

The records were still there.

The photos too.

Three children.

Three different faces.

And in all three documents, following the father’s line, the same surname that he had proudly carried all his life.

Vargas.

“No…” she murmured, her voice breaking. “It can’t be.”

Isabella covered her chest with her hands.

Not out of shame.

Out of shame.

Because of pain.

For years on end, there was silence.

“I didn’t want to believe it either,” she whispered. “For a long time I prayed it was a lie.”

Eduardo took a step back.

The scar on Isabella’s body burned into her gaze.

He no longer saw the shy young woman he had protected in the hospital.

I saw a woman who had survived something monstrous.

“Explain everything to me,” he finally said, gripping the minutes so tightly that the paper crackled between his fingers. “Now.”

Isabella closed her eyes.

He took a deep breath.

And when he opened them again, he seemed to have aged ten years in an instant.

—I was born in San Jerónimo. A small town, three hours from here. My mother washed other people’s clothes. My grandfather was a night watchman on a farm. When I was sixteen, your father started going there often.

Eduardo remained motionless.

He didn’t remember his father as a saint.

But not like a predator either.

I remembered him as elegant.

Respected.

Admired.

A man who gave alms at the church and scholarships to the town’s students.

That’s what everyone saw.

“He helped many families,” Eduardo said, almost reflexively.

Isabella let out a bitter laugh.

The kind that are born where nothing is clean anymore.

—Yes. First I helped. Then I charged.

The silence tightened like a rope about to break.

—He promised my mother a job in the capital. He gave her money for medicine when she got sick. He made us believe he was a savior. And then he started calling me to the big house with any excuse. To do the books. To clean his office. To serve coffee when he was alone.

Eduardo felt nauseous.

“One night he locked the door,” Isabella continued. “I was seventeen. I screamed. Nobody came.”

Her voice did not break.

That was the worst part.

He told it with the coldness of someone who has already cried all he had to cry.

—After that, he kept looking for me. I wanted to leave, but my mother’s condition worsened. He was paying for the treatment. He held me by the neck without touching me. If I reported him, he would leave us on the street. If I refused, he threatened to take everything from us.

Eduardo slowly dropped the documents onto the bed.

His hands were trembling.

—And the children?

Isabella’s eyes filled with tears.

“They’re not my blood children. They belong to three other girls from the village. Mateo is Clara’s son. Chucho is Ofelia’s. Lupita is Rosa’s. All three of them got pregnant by him. All three were expelled, silenced, or buried in shame.”

Eduardo looked up, frozen.

—Buried?

Isabella nodded.

Clara died of a fever after giving birth. Ofelia threw herself into a well. Rosa disappeared. No one ever saw her again. And since in those villages they always blame the woman, the children were marked from birth. Bastards. Children of sin. No one wanted to go near them.

Eduardo put a hand to his mouth.

Now I understood.

Money.

Monthly shipments.

Isabella’s stubbornness in working tirelessly.

—You raised them.

—Yes. Because someone had to do it. Because when my mother died, I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to let those children pay for the evil of a rich man.

The room became unbearably small.

The luxury of the estate.

The white flowers.

The bed was spotless.

Everything seemed obscene in the face of that truth.

“And this scar?” Eduardo asked, barely in a whisper.

Isabella looked down at her side.

“The last time your father summoned me, I didn’t go alone. I brought the girls’ first letters with me. Proof. I told him that if he didn’t recognize the children, I was going to talk. He smiled at me. As if I were a silly little girl. And when I tried to leave, one of his men stopped me. There was a struggle. I fell onto a glass table.”

Eduardo felt a jolt of rage so strong that he had to grab onto the edge of the dressing table.

—That same day I escaped from the town with the papers. That’s why I came to this ranch. Because I knew you were here. And because I believed that one day I might find a way to approach the Vargas family without being crushed before I could even speak.

Eduardo looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time.

—So… you approached me for that reason?

The question came across as more hurtful than accusatory.

Isabella closed her eyes.

It took him several seconds to respond.

—At first, yes.

The confession landed like a clean knife.

“I wanted justice. I wanted to get close to the son of the man who destroyed so many lives. I thought maybe you were just like him. I thought I was going to hate you. But then you got sick… and I saw how you treated the farmhands, how you asked about their families, how you cried in your sleep calling for your father without knowing who he really was… and everything inside me broke.”

Eduardo swallowed hard.

—You should have told me the truth before marrying me.

“I tried so many times,” she said, finally bursting into tears. “But every time I looked at you, I was afraid I would destroy you. And I was also afraid you wouldn’t believe me. That you’d think I was a liar after money. That you’d throw me out. That those children would be left alone again.”

A sharp knock echoed outside the room.

They both remained still.

Then another one.

Stronger.

—Eduardo! —Doña Mercedes’ voice cracked through the door like a whip—. Open up right now.

Eduardo stiffened.

Isabella paled.

“No…” she whispered. “She knows something.”

The door shook again.

“That woman is poisoning your mind!” Mercedes shouted from outside. “Don’t let her say another word!”

Eduardo walked towards the door, but Isabella grabbed his arm.

“Be careful,” he said. “The night I escaped, your father wasn’t the only one there. Your mother was there too.”

He froze.

-That?

Isabella’s tears were now flowing uncontrollably.

—She knew everything. She knew who those children were. She knew what your father was doing. She was the one who told me to get out of town if I wanted to stay alive.

Something inside Eduardo broke with a silent sound.

It was no surprise.

It was devastation.

Everything that had sustained his family name for years suddenly collapsed.

The exemplary father.

The impeccable mother.

The honorable family.

Rotten.

Everything is rotten to the core.

The blows suddenly stopped.

And then there was a click.

The door began to open slowly.

Doña Mercedes entered without waiting for permission.

She was still wearing the elegant dark wedding dress.

But she no longer looked like an offended mother.

She looked like a woman cornered.

His eyes went straight to the documents on the bed.

Then on to the photos.

Then to Isabella.

And her face lost the last trace of color.

“So you did it in the end,” he said, his voice so cold it chilled her. “You dragged the garbage all the way to my house.”

Eduardo turned slowly towards her.

-It’s true?

Doña Mercedes did not respond immediately.

He looked at his son.

Then to Isabella.

And for a moment he seemed to be torn between continuing to lie… or spilling everything.

“There are truths that are not spoken in order to protect a family,” she finally said.

“Answer me!” roared Eduardo, slamming his fist on the table.

Mercedes took a step back.

She had never seen him like that in her life.

“Yes,” he finally said, almost spitting it out. “Your father did unforgivable things. But you don’t understand how this world worked. Men like him didn’t fall. Never. And if I spoke out, it wasn’t just him who would go down. We would all go down.”

Eduardo felt like he couldn’t breathe anymore.

—And that’s why you kept quiet?

“That’s why I survived!” she shouted. “That’s why I kept you as heir to an empire instead of turning you into the ruined son of a public monster!”

Isabella stepped forward.

—And while you survived, three women died.

Mercedes looked at her with an ancient hatred.

—You should have disappeared that night.

Eduardo spun around suddenly.

—What did you just say?

Mercedes’ expression changed.

Too late.

He had spoken out of turn.

Isabella began to back away.

He understood before Eduardo.

The door was still open.

And behind Doña Mercedes, in the hallway, were two security men from the hacienda.

The same hard eyes.

The same position.

The same kind of silence.

Mercedes barely raised her chin.

—Son, stay away from that woman. We still have time to fix this.

Eduardo stood in front of Isabella.

—Nobody touches her.

One of the guards took a half step forward.

Then Eduardo took from the bureau an old collector’s pistol that he used only as an ornament.

She pointed it at them with a trembling hand.

And at that moment, while his mother looked at him as if she no longer recognized the man in front of her, Eduardo said the phrase that would forever set the Vargas name ablaze:

—Tomorrow I will publicly acknowledge those three children… and then I will tell the whole town who my father really was.