Chapter 3 - The Memory Card
The hospital admitted Valeria immediately.
After blood tests, monitoring, and an ultrasound, the obstetrician finally gave Alejandro permission to breathe again.
The baby was stable.
Valeria had suffered trauma but showed no immediate signs of severe placental separation.
She would need rest.
Strict monitoring.
And absolutely no unnecessary stress.
Alejandro nearly laughed at the final instruction.
Stress had become the foundation of their lives.
When the doctor left, Valeria handed him the memory card.
“You can look now.”
Alejandro inserted it into his laptop.
The first photograph showed an old wooden crate.
The second showed a canvas wrapped in protective paper.
The third made him sit forward.
It was a religious painting.
A woman in dark robes.
A child in her arms.
Gold leaf around the border.
Alejandro frowned.
“What am I looking at?”
“An eighteenth-century painting called The Virgin of San Miguel.”
Valeria answered.
“It disappeared from a private collection twenty-three years ago.”
“How do you know?”
“I helped restore a reproduction for an exhibition in Coyoacán.”
“I know every crack in that painting.”
Alejandro enlarged the photograph.
“You’re saying the original is in our basement?”
“Not your normal basement.”
Valeria explained.
Three weeks earlier, she had been looking for old frames for the nursery.
One of the housekeepers told her there was a storage area beneath the west wing.
Valeria found a locked service corridor.
The door had been left open after maintenance workers entered.
Inside were dozens of climate-controlled crates.
Some carried false labels for construction materials.
Others had gallery inventory numbers.
Valeria recognized two.
Both belonged to works listed internationally as stolen.
She photographed everything.
Then she found a ledger.
Dates.
Shipping companies.
Private buyers.
Auction codes.
And names.
Alejandro stared at her.
“Whose names?”
Valeria took the laptop.
She opened another photograph.
Alejandro’s face changed.
ESTHER ARANDA.
MARCELA ARANDA.
RICARDO ARANDA.
His late father.
Alejandro stood.
“My father?”
“I don’t know what his name means.”
“It could mean he was involved.”
“Or it could mean something else.”
Alejandro looked at the dates.
Some entries went back nearly twenty years.
His father had died seven years earlier in what the family called a highway accident.
Alejandro suddenly felt cold.
“Why didn’t you show me this immediately?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“The night I found it.”
Valeria looked at him.
“You were in Monterrey.”
“I called your office.”
“Marcela answered.”
Alejandro remembered.
Marcela sometimes handled family matters when he traveled.
“She told me you were unreachable.”
Valeria continued.
“The next morning, your mother asked me why I was wandering through restricted parts of the house.”
Alejandro’s jaw tightened.
“And three nights ago?”
“I went back.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted the ledger.”
Valeria looked down.
“Marcela caught me.”
The room went quiet.
“What did she say?”
“She told me some women marry into powerful families and forget they can be removed from them.”
Alejandro’s hands curled.
“Then she grabbed my arm.”
“I pulled away.”
“She shoved me.”
Valeria swallowed.
“And when I hit the wall, she looked at my stomach and said something I will never forget.”
Alejandro could barely speak.
“What?”
May you like
Valeria’s voice became almost inaudible.
“She said, ‘Maybe now Mother won’t have to solve this problem herself.’”
