Chapter 3

Over the next two days, Nico and I were effectively confined to the storage room.

Two bodyguards stood outside the door around the clock. Whenever I tried to leave with Nico, they blocked the doorway. "Mr. Vega says you need to remain in the room for the child's safety."

Lucia tried to bring us food and was shoved into the mud by one of them. I stood at the window watching her get up and wipe her tears, my nails digging slowly into my palms.

That afternoon, a luxury car with Madrid plates pulled up outside the courtyard.

Dario's mother, Isabel Vega, stepped out. In a sharply tailored suit with a silk scarf in hand, she entered the courtyard and covered her nose in disgust, as if the dirt and cooking smoke might contaminate the air she breathed.

A bodyguard pushed the door open for her. She didn't come inside. She stood in the doorway and looked me over. "So you're the Romani woman who's been clinging to Dario for seven years?"

I pulled Nico behind me and said nothing.

She drew a document from her handbag and dropped it on the floor. "Sign it. Accept a one-time settlement and give up primary custody. You can visit according to the court's schedule after that, but you are not to interfere with Dario and Sofia's marriage."

I glanced down. It was a custody and nondisclosure agreement blatantly favoring the Vega family.

"And if I don't sign?"

She looked amused as she slowly adjusted her gloves. "How long do you think that little inn of yours can stay open? Fire permits, tourism licenses, bank loans. If even one gets flagged for review, you won't last a month. Your people love to talk about family and freedom, but what do you have to fight the Vega family with in court?"

Her gaze swept over me without the slightest effort to hide her contempt. "Don't misunderstand. I don't look down on all Romani people. I simply won't allow my grandson to keep living in a place like this, raised by a mother with no real profession and no respectable name."

That polite veneer of discrimination was more nauseating than an outright slur.

I asked calmly, "And locking me in this room is for the child's sake too?"

Her expression shifted slightly before settling into a cold smile. "No one is locking you up. You're simply emotionally unstable, and the bodyguards are here for your protection. Be realistic. The Vega family is offering you money. You should learn to be grateful."

As she turned to leave, she added, "There's a welcome dinner tomorrow night. I expect the agreement to be signed. Sofia will be introduced to everyone as Mrs. Vega. Don't upset her."

As she passed my mother's loom lying in the dirt, her heel caught on the wooden beam and left a fresh gouge. She looked down at it the way she might look at a piece of rubbish blocking her path, then told the bodyguard to kick it farther out of the way.

I watched through the window and remembered the first time Dario came here, when he'd spent an entire day repairing that same loom for my mother. Back then, he'd said no one had the right to look down on another person for where they came from.

People don't turn cruel overnight. They simply stop hiding it once they believe you'll never leave.

The door closed again.

The light faded. The storage room had no ceiling lamp. Only moonlight from the window fell across the edge of the bed. Nico was asleep in my arms, his lashes still wet with tears.

My phone buzzed. A voice message from Dario.

"Mira, Sofia isn't feeling well, and I have to stay with her. The marriage was a family decision. I didn't have a choice. Stop obsessing over it and sign the agreement like I told you. I promise I won't abandon you. When I'm back in Madrid, I'll rent you an apartment, and I'll visit when the time is right. My heart is still yours. You know that."

He used a tender voice to say the cruelest things.

He thought an "I love you" could paper over betrayal, plunder, and control.

I didn't reply. I put the phone on silent and opened the encrypted files Mateo had sent.

The first file contained Sofia's medical records. She wasn't pregnant. The supposed proof that she was carrying Javier's child was a forged certificate from a private clinic, and her treatment records from the previous six months made the pregnancy timeline impossible.

The second file documented the financial crimes Javier had left behind. Vega Logistics had been moving money through shell companies, and after Javier's death, Dario kept hiding the transactions to protect the company and the family name. His marriage to Sofia had never been about a child. It was about securing the investment her family had promised.

The third was the case file Dario planned to submit to the court. They intended to portray me as a mother with unstable income, unsafe living conditions, and emotional instability, then leverage stereotypes against Romani people to gain a custody advantage.

I looked at those documents, and my mind was perfectly calm.

Dario thought I was only a woman tucked away in an old courtyard, embroidering cloth and checking in tourists. He forgot that I kept the inn's books, filed the co-op's taxes, caught irregularities in the Vega family's Andalusian investments, and connected him with accountants and lawyers.

He didn't fail to see my ability.

He had simply grown used to treating my ability as his resource while dismissing me as a woman who couldn't survive without him.

I backed everything up to the cloud, then uploaded the footage of the bodyguards blocking Lucia from bringing us food, the custody agreement from Dario's legal team, and the recorded audio of his mother's threats.

Nico stirred awake from a nightmare and clung to my neck. "Mommy, do they think we're bad?"

I held him tighter. "No. Some people look down on us because they have no decency, not because we did anything wrong. You don't need a different mother or a different last name to be a good boy."

He nodded, not quite understanding, and buried his face in my shoulder.

I patted his back gently, then sent Mateo one last message.

"Come get me tomorrow. I want them to answer for everything they've done, right in front of everyone."