Chapter 3: The Man Who Wasn't Supposed to Be There
Mateo drove himself to the hospital.
No driver.
No friends.
He left Valeria standing in the hotel doorway still holding the sheet around her shoulders, calling his name.
He didn't look back.
The city was quiet at that hour.
Grey light.
Empty roads.
He ran two red lights and didn't notice.
His mind kept returning to the photo.
Alejandro's hand over Camila's.
The hospital bracelet on her wrist.
The stillness of her face.
He pulled into the hospital parking structure and sat in the car for almost a minute before he could make himself get out.
The maternity ward was on the fourth floor.
He knew because he had toured it three months ago with Camila, back when he was still pretending to be the husband she deserved.
She had pointed out the room she wanted.
He had nodded and checked his phone.
He stepped out of the elevator and stopped.
Alejandro was standing in the corridor.
He was still in the same clothes from the night before.
No tie.
Sleeves rolled up.
A paper cup of coffee in one hand that looked like it had gone cold hours ago.
He looked like a man who had not slept, had not eaten, and had not moved from that spot for a very long time.
He looked up when Mateo appeared.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Then Mateo said, "Where is she?"
"Room 412." Alejandro's voice was flat.
"She's stable.
The baby is stable.
No thanks to you."
Mateo's jaw tightened.
"You need to explain what you're doing here."
"I'm here because you weren't."
"She is my wife."
"Yes." Alejandro set the coffee cup down on the windowsill beside him.
"She is.
And she called you seventeen times while she was lying on the floor of your house.
I counted.
The call log is still on her phone."
Mateo took a step forward.
"You had no right to go into my home."
"She gave me the gate code five years ago." Alejandro didn't move.
"Before you made her delete my number.
Before you told her I was a threat.
Before you spent two years convincing her that the only person she could trust was you." He paused.
"How did that work out for her last night?"
"This is none of your business."
"She called me, Mateo.
That made it my business."
Mateo looked down the corridor toward room 412.
His hands were at his sides.
"I want you gone before she wakes up."
Alejandro looked at him for a long moment.
Something moved behind his eyes — not anger exactly.
Something quieter and more dangerous than anger.
"She's already awake," he said.
"She woke up forty minutes ago.
The first thing she asked was whether the baby was safe.
The second thing she asked was whether you had called."
Mateo said nothing.
"I told her no." Alejandro picked up the coffee cup again.
"She didn't look surprised."
Mateo pushed past him and walked down the corridor.
His footsteps were loud on the tile.
He stopped at the door marked 412, put his hand on the handle, and then stood there without opening it.
Behind him, Alejandro spoke one more time.
"She nearly l0st that baby, Mateo.
The doctors said another twenty minutes on that floor and she would have l0st them both.
Twenty minutes." A pause.
"You were forty-five minutes away.
I was eleven."
Mateo opened the door and went inside.
Camila was propped up against the pillows, pale and still, a monitor clipped to her finger.
There were dark circles under her eyes.
Her hair was loose and tangled.
She looked like someone who had survived something that should not have been survived.
She looked at him when he came in.
She didn't say anything.
He crossed the room and sat in the chair beside the bed — the chair that still held the shape of someone else who had been sitting in it for hours — and he reached for her hand.
She let him take it.
But she turned her face toward the window.
"The baby is fine," she said quietly.
"A girl.
They confirmed it last night.
A girl."
Mateo's throat tightened.
"Camila—"
"I'm tired, Mateo." Her voice was very soft.
Not angry.
Just emptied out.
"I don't want to talk right now."
He sat there holding her hand while she looked at the window and the morning light came slowly through the glass.
Outside in the corridor, he heard Alejandro's footsteps moving away down the hall.
May you like
And he understood, for the first time, that the man walking away was not the problem.
He was.
