CHAPTER 13: LUCIA
375 Words
Lucía had always hated funerals.
Not because of death—
but because of truth.
Truth had a way of surfacing in places like that, slipping through cracks people thought they had sealed years ago.
She sat at the small kitchen table, Mateo coloring beside her, the apartment suddenly feeling unfamiliar. Temporary. Borrowed.
The lawyer’s email glowed on her phone.
You have rights.
Lucía closed her eyes.
She didn’t want rights.
She wanted answers.
She had loved Andrés. That was the part no one wanted to hear. Loved him in the quiet, ordinary ways that didn’t look scandalous from the outside. He had shown up consistently. Cooked dinner. Helped Mateo with homework. Kissed her forehead before leaving for “work trips.”
He had promised a future.
She hadn’t known she was the secret.
The apartment held evidence of a life she had believed was legitimate—photos on the walls, shoes by the door, a toothbrush that still sat in the holder like it was waiting for him to come back.
Lucía pressed her fingers into the table until they hurt.
I didn’t steal him, she thought.
He gave himself away.
Mateo looked up from his drawing. “Is this our house forever?”
The question pierced her cleanly.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
That night, she stood on the balcony, city lights flickering below, and allowed herself to think of Valeria—not as an enemy, but as a woman whose life had collided violently with hers.
She looked so composed at the funeral. So controlled.
So broken.
Lucía wondered what it felt like to lose a life you had built slowly, brick by brick, without ever realizing someone else was living in the blueprint too.
The phone buzzed again. Another message from the lawyer. Numbers. Percentages. Possibilities.
Lucía exhaled shakily.
This wasn’t about greed.
It was about survival.
She wasn’t fighting a woman.
She was fighting a ghost—
and ghosts had a way of leaving the living to clean up their messes.
As she tucked Mateo into bed that night, Lucía realized something that terrified her more than court dates or legal fees:
Andrés was gone.
And whatever came next, no one was going to save her from it.
- Writer
