Todos os capítulos de Only Her Touch : Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

Carla's voice carried through the speaker, steady and careful. "The child's name on the record is Renata Cruz. Born the same year as you, Alicia, adopted into the Vasquez household four years before you were, and quietly removed from every family record eleven months later." Alicia felt the words land slowly, like something dropping through deep water. "Removed how?""The file doesn't say," Carla admitted. "There's a transfer order, some kind of relocation to a private boarding arrangement out of state, and then nothing. No further paperwork. No trace of her after that year." Roberto's hand tightened around Alicia's, grounding her against the sudden, dizzying realization settling over the whole evening. "She wasn't the first," he said quietly. "Before you. He tried this once already.""And it didn't work the way he wanted," Alicia said slowly, the pieces falling into place with the same cold clarity she'd trained herself to find in every crisis since childhood. "So he erased her, and

Alicia woke before dawn, though nobody had asked her to. The rooftop terrace, when she finally stepped out to see it in the early grey light, had transformed overnight into something she barely recognized from the half finished rows of chairs she'd stood among two nights before. White orchids lined a narrow aisle. Strings of soft gold lights, still dark in the morning light, waited to be lit once evening came. A single arch stood at the far end, facing the open sky, exactly where Priya had promised it would."You're supposed to be resting," Priya said, appearing at her elbow with two cups of tea, her voice gentle despite the exhaustion visible beneath her own composure. "Big day. You need the energy.""I couldn't sleep." Alicia accepted the tea gratefully, wrapping both hands around the warmth of it. "Too much waiting for something to go wrong.""Nothing's going to go wrong," Priya said, with the particular firmness of someone determined to make a statement true through sheer force o

The moment Roberto's mouth met hers as husband and wife, Alicia forgot, for one full breath, that anyone else existed on that rooftop at all. The string lights had come fully alive by then, gold and warm against the darkening sky, and when they finally broke apart, laughter and applause rose around them, real and unguarded, the tension of Ignacio's interruption already softening into something the night refused to let win. Matt, still seated near the front, wiped at his eyes with the back of one trembling hand, grinning at Roberto with a pride so open it made Alicia's chest ache. The reception unfolded slowly after that, dinner served beneath the string lights, quiet conversation and careful, hard won joy replacing the fear that had shadowed the last three weeks. Alicia moved through it like someone finally allowed to simply exist in her own happiness, dancing with Priya, laughing with Carla over a glass of champagne, accepting Matt's soft, teasing warnings about keeping his boy in li

Doris Vasquez had learned, a long time ago, that the safest place to feel anything at all was behind a closed door.She sat now at her father's study, waiting for him to finish a phone call he hadn't bothered to take elsewhere, listening to the low, clipped cadence of his voice without catching the words, and felt the same old, familiar tightness settle into her shoulders that had lived there for as long as she could remember. It didn't matter how many rooms she'd learned to command. In this house, in front of this man, she was still, somehow, eleven years old.He ended the call and turned to her at last, his expression unreadable in the way it always was, the particular stillness that made grown men in boardrooms shift uncomfortably in their seats."The wedding went forward," he said, without preamble. "Despite everything.""I heard," Doris said carefully. "The guardianship petition didn't hold.""No," Ignacio agreed, something cold moving behind his eyes. "It didn't. Your lawyer's a

Alicia was already moving before she'd finished reading the message twice, phone pressed to her ear, Doris's number ringing once, twice, three times before dropping into voicemail."Come on," she muttered, ending the call and immediately trying again, her pulse climbing with every unanswered ring. Roberto found her in the hallway outside the meeting room, his expression sharpening the moment he saw her face. "What happened?""Someone knows Doris came to me," Alicia said, showing him the message with a hand that wasn't quite steady. "They sent this to my personal number, Roberto. Not the number Priya uses. Not the number on any business card. My actual phone."Roberto's jaw tightened as he read it, something cold and furious settling behind his eyes. "That number exists in exactly three places. My contacts, Priya's contacts, and whatever system Carla's office uses for secure communication.""Which means someone's inside one of those systems," Alicia said, the pieces already assembling