Difficult children went there.
Depressed children.
Anxious children.
“Inconvenient” children.
Children wealthy families wanted hidden elegantly.
And Renata intended to declare Valentina emotionally unstable.
Alejandro looked up sharply.
“What?”
Valentina wiped her face with trembling fingers.
“She’s been recording me.”
“Recording you?”
“When I cry. When we argue. When I panic.”
Maricela spoke quietly from beside the door.
“She tells people the niña is unstable, sir.”
Alejandro felt physically nauseated.
Valentina nodded weakly.
“She said after tonight they were taking me directly to the airport.”
“Tonight?”
“She thought you were still in Madrid until Wednesday.”
Downstairs, laughter erupted again.
Alejandro suddenly heard the party differently.
Not celebration.
Cover.
Witnesses.
Alibis.
Social insulation.
The realization hit him with horrifying clarity.
Renata had organized a public gathering on the exact night she planned to remove their daughter from the country.
If questions came later, she would already have thirty people prepared to describe her as a worried, devoted mother hosting friends while helping her “troubled” daughter seek treatment abroad.
Calculated.
Elegant.
Monstrous.
Alejandro looked back at the letter.
The final paragraph nearly shattered him completely.
I kept waiting for you to notice me, Papá.
Not buy me things. Not send messages from airports. Notice me.
But I think maybe work made you forget how to look at people when they’re hurting.
I still love you anyway.
That’s the embarrassing part.
Alejandro lowered the pages slowly.
He could not speak.
Because every sentence was true.
He had provided everything except presence.
He knew the occupancy rates of hotels in five countries.
He knew investor schedules.
Currency fluctuations.
Expansion forecasts.
But he had not noticed his daughter disappearing inside his own home.
And now she had packed a suitcase believing she needed permission to escape.
The most important part is just ahead — click NEXT »»
