Chapter 2 - The Secret María Kept
My toes moved three times that afternoon. By midnight, six physicians had examined me. Two insisted it could be an involuntary spasm. One neurologist from Madrid stared at my scans for nearly an hour before admitting that something had changed. “Your original spinal injury was severe,” Dr. Elena Ferrer told me in the private clinic I funded ten years earlier. “But not completely severed. There were always surviving nerve pathways.” I stared at her. “You told me walking was impossible.” “I told you recovery was unlikely.” “Five years in a wheelchair feels like a strange time to become precise about vocabulary.” She sighed. “Alejandro, nerves can remain dormant. Muscle activation can appear unexpectedly. Mental focus, repeated stimulation, physical therapy—” “A five-year-old touched my knees.” Dr. Ferrer’s eyebrows rose. “That isn’t medicine.” “I’m aware.”
Sofia sat in the corner eating crackers while María stood near the window refusing to meet my eyes. When the doctors finally left, I locked the room door. “Talk.” María turned. “Not here.” “You said you knew something about my accident.” “I said there was something I should have told you.” “That distinction is not going to save you.” Sofia looked between us nervously. My anger softened slightly. “Sofia, Elena will take you downstairs and get you dinner.” “I can stay.” “I know.” I nodded toward Dr. Ferrer. “But I need five minutes.” Sofia climbed down from the chair and pointed at me. “Don’t yell at María.” “No promises.” “Alejandro.” María sounded almost amused. Sofia left.
The second the door closed, María opened her handbag and removed an old envelope. “Isabel gave this to me eleven days before the crash.” I stopped breathing. Isabel’s handwriting was across the front. For Alejandro, if anything happens to me. I had seen that handwriting on birthday cards, grocery lists, notes tucked into jacket pockets. For five years I had saved every scrap of it. “Why do you have this?” “Because she told me not to give it to you unless I became certain.” “Certain of what?” María’s hands trembled. “That the crash wasn’t an accident.”
The room seemed to tilt. “Explain.” “Isabel had started looking into your company accounts. She believed someone inside Romero Holdings was moving money through shell companies. She was afraid.” “Afraid of whom?” “She didn’t tell me.” “And you waited five years?” “You were barely alive! Then you lost her, lost your legs, stopped sleeping, stopped speaking to half your family. I thought giving you another enemy would destroy whatever was left.” I snatched the envelope. “You didn’t have the right.” “I know.” That answer stole some of my fury.
Inside was a single page. Isabel wrote that she had discovered payments from one Romero Holdings subsidiary to a private rehabilitation contractor called Helix Neurocare. The payments made no business sense. She believed my older cousin Sebastián Romero was involved. The final sentence was worse: If Alejandro is ever injured, do not let Helix treat him.
My fingers went numb. “Helix treated me after the crash.” María nodded. “For nine months.” I remembered the private facility, the expensive equipment, the endless medications, the physicians Sebastián personally recommended. “Why would Isabel warn you before the crash?” “She suspected they were falsifying medical reports.” A knock came at the door. Dr. Ferrer entered without waiting. Her face had changed. “Alejandro, I reviewed your original post-accident imaging.” “And?” “There’s a problem.”
She placed two scans side by side on the screen. “This was taken forty-eight hours after your accident.” She pointed at the damaged region of my spine. “This is the scan Helix submitted four months later.” Even I could see the difference. “The later scan looks worse.” “Much worse.” “Could deterioration explain that?” “Possible, but your surgical notes don’t support it.” She swallowed. “Also, the metadata is wrong.” “Meaning?” “The second scan might not be yours.”
I laughed once, without humor. “Someone used another patient’s scan to tell me I’d never walk?” “I’m not saying that yet.” “Say what you are saying.” “I’m saying your prognosis may have been deliberately misrepresented.”
The door opened again and Sofia peeked inside. “Can I come back now?” Nobody answered. She entered anyway and climbed onto the chair beside me. “Why does everyone look scared?” I folded Isabel’s letter. “Because adults make complicated messes.” Sofia nodded wisely. “They do.”
The following morning, I hired a private security team to find everything they could about Helix Neurocare. By lunchtime, we had a problem: Helix had closed three years earlier. Its chief neurologist, Dr. Mateo Varela, had disappeared. Most records had been destroyed in a warehouse fire.
And Sebastián? He arrived at my penthouse before sunset without being invited.
He walked in wearing a navy suit and the same easy smile he’d worn since we were boys. “I heard about your foot. Miracle season?” I watched him from across the room. “Who told you?” “Barcelona talks.” His eyes shifted toward Sofia, who sat on the rug drawing with María. “And this is the little saint?”
Sofia looked up. “I’m not a saint.”
Sebastián laughed. “Good. Saints are exhausting.”
I held out Isabel’s letter.
The smile disappeared.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
“Recognize her handwriting?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Recognize Helix?”
His face settled into calm. “They treated you.”
“Why did my company send them €4.7 million before my accident?”
María inhaled sharply.
Sebastián stared at me for a long moment. “You shouldn’t dig into this.”
That was not the answer of an innocent man.
I leaned forward. “Why?”
He looked toward Sofia again.
Then at me.
“Because,” he said quietly, “your accident wasn’t meant to kill Isabel.”
May you like
My blood went cold.
“It was meant to kill you.”
