Chapter 3 - The Camera That Saw EverythingJavier didn't sleep that night.
He sat in the chair beside my bed, staring at the floor, while I watched the shadows move across the hospital ceiling.
Every few minutes, he checked his phone.
Every few minutes, I remembered Carmen's smile.
At six in the morning, Javier finally stood.
“I need to go home and bring you some clothes.”
“Ask someone else.”
“Laura, I won't let Mom near you.”
I wanted to believe him, but I was too exhausted to argue.
“Bring my blue bag. It's in the bedroom.”
He nodded and kissed my forehead before leaving.
The instant the door closed, I reached for my phone and called the only person I trusted outside my marriage.
My older sister, Isabel.
She answered on the third ring.
“Laura? What's wrong?”
I tried to explain everything without crying, but my voice broke when I told her about the fall and the baby.
“I’m coming,” she said immediately.
“No. Wait. Please. I need you to do something first.”
“What?”
“Find out everything you can about Javier's family. The company, the house, whatever his father left behind.”
She went silent.
“Why?”
I glanced toward the door.
“Because Carmen said something about inheritance. And I think she knows more than she's telling us.”
Isabel promised to look into it.
An hour later, Javier returned carrying my clothes. He looked worse than before.
“Did you get some rest?” he asked.
“Did you find anything at home?”
He frowned.
“What do you mean?”
I didn't answer.
He placed the bag on the chair and pulled out his phone.
“There's something I want to show you.”
He sat beside me and opened an application connected to the security system at our house.
Months earlier, Javier had installed a small camera above the kitchen entrance after several tools disappeared from the garage. He had almost forgotten about it.
Almost.
“I checked the recordings,” he said quietly.
My heart began to pound.
He turned the screen toward me.
The video showed me mopping the floor.
It showed Carmen entering the kitchen.
It showed the mop handle brushing her ankle.
And then it showed everything.
The slap.
The bucket of filthy water.
My fall.
My desperate attempts to get up.
Carmen standing over me without lifting a finger.
I covered my mouth as I watched myself crawl across the floor, one hand pressed against my stomach.
Javier looked as though someone had struck him.
“I didn't know it was this bad,” he whispered.
The recording continued.
After I fell, Carmen glanced toward the hallway. She walked out of the camera's view, returned with her phone, and made a call.
Javier increased the volume.
At first, we heard only indistinct words. Then Carmen moved closer to the kitchen entrance.
Her voice became clear.
“She's fallen. I think the pregnancy may be over.”
I stopped breathing.
Javier looked at me.
Neither of us spoke.
On the recording, Carmen listened to the person on the other end.
Then she said, “No, I haven't called anyone yet.”
My husband lurched forward.
“What the hell?”
Carmen glanced at the clock.
A few seconds passed.
Then she said, “If the baby is gone, the problem disappears.”
The room seemed to tilt around me.
Javier replayed the sentence.
Once.
Twice.
He looked at the timestamp.
The call had lasted nearly four minutes before he came home.
Four minutes during which I had been lying on the floor, bleeding and terrified, while his mother discussed my pregnancy as though it were an obstacle to be removed.
“Who was she talking to?” I whispered.
“I don't know.”
“Find out.”
He continued watching.
Just before the recording ended, Carmen returned to the kitchen. She looked down at the place where I had fallen.
Then she picked up the bucket and moved it toward the sink.
She wasn't trying to help me.
She was cleaning the evidence.
Javier slammed his phone onto the bed.
“I'm calling the police.”
“Wait.”
“Laura, she left you on the floor. She knew you were bleeding!”
“I know.”
“She could have killed you!”
“I know!”
The words came out louder than I intended.
Tears spilled down my cheeks.
“I was there, Javier. I felt every second of it.”
He immediately sat beside me.
“I'm sorry.”
I looked at him for a long time.
“Are you sorry because she hurt me? Or because you finally saw her doing it?”
He had no answer.
A notification suddenly appeared on his phone.
It was a message from an unknown number.
Delete the kitchen footage. Your father made the same mistake, and look what happened to him.
Javier stared at the screen.
“What does that mean?”
I didn't know.
But I noticed the message had arrived just moments after we watched the recording.
Someone knew we had the footage.
Someone was watching Javier.
He called the police anyway and preserved the video. By noon, a detective had contacted the hospital to arrange an interview.
Yet the most frightening discovery came when Javier opened his father's old correspondence.
Buried among the documents was a letter addressed to him, dated six months before his father died.
The final paragraph had been underlined in red.
If your first child is ever in danger, do not trust Carmen to tell you the truth.
Javier read it twice.
Then he turned toward me, his face drained of color.
“My father knew something.”
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And suddenly, the question wasn't whether Carmen had acted alone.
It was how long the Méndez family had been hiding a secret that could explain why she was terrified of our daughter's birth.
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