PART 2
The next morning, Diego acted completely unbothered. He called to ask if Sofia had eaten breakfast, adding casually, “The officers said they still don’t know what that little fragment was. Probably debris left over from an old construction job.”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
There was a brief pause on the line. “The technicians, right before they wrapped up.”
His tone was smooth, reasonable, and reassuring.
An hour later, Lucia sent me a missing persons flyer from six years ago. The photograph showed a young woman with short hair and a bright smile named Daniela Rios. She had disappeared three blocks from our building.
Lucia’s follow-up message made my chest tighten:
She was Diego’s girlfriend for nearly seven years. They were engaged to be married.
When I confronted him that evening, he set his coffee cup down on the table with deliberate force.
“Who told you about her?”
He didn’t ask what are you talking about or who is Daniela. He asked who had been talking to me.
“What happened to her, Diego?”
“She left.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his expression softening into a mild frown. “Lucia’s job makes her see crimes everywhere.”
Over the next few days, he quietly sowed that same narrative among our family. He told my mother I was suffering from severe anxiety. He mentioned to his own mother, Teresa, that Lucia was deeply unhinged following her recent divorce.
That was when my anxiety turned into quiet, sharp rage.
Lucia asked me to audit our personal finances. I had assumed I knew our financial state because Diego’s salary was deposited into a joint checking account used for groceries, utilities, and Sofia’s preschool. But reviewing five years of bank records revealed that the heavy lifting had come from somewhere else.
Four years ago, he had paid off a $25,000 lump sum on our mortgage. Another year, he covered a $12,000 medical procedure for his mother in a single wire transfer. We had remodeled our kitchen and upgraded our HVAC system. Whenever I had asked back then, he would smile and say, “Don’t worry about the big bills, sweetheart. Let me handle the heavy lifting.”
In a box in his home office closet, I found an old savings passbook. It showed massive cash deposits made seven years ago, followed by near-total withdrawals six years ago. The final withdrawal was dated three days after Daniela’s reported disappearance.
Diego walked into the office while I was holding the passbook.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
I lied, saying I needed Sofia’s birth certificate for a school form.
He took the passbook from my hand. “That’s ancient history. Just old business records.” He offered a small smile. “Why do you worry yourself with these things?”
The next day, I tracked down Mr. Chuy, the building’s veteran maintenance supervisor. I asked him about our master bathroom.
“A leak? No,” Mr. Chuy said, shaking his head. “What you had six years ago was a terrible backup. I told Diego we needed to break up the floor tiles and clear the main line, but he nearly threw me out of the apartment. Then he hired an uncertified contractor to work on it privately behind closed doors.”
“Was he living alone then?”
Mr. Chuy frowned. “No, he was living with a girl with short hair. Daniela. They argued a lot toward the end. I heard her shouting at him in the hallway once: ‘That money isn’t yours!’”
That evening, Diego cooked dinner and served me the best portion. I looked at him across the table and asked, “If I set up a separate checking account for my pharmacy salary moving forward, would that bother you?”
His fork hovered mid-air. “We’re husband and wife, Mariana. Why start separating what’s mine and what’s yours?”
Two days later, his mother, Teresa, unexpectedly moved into our guest room, claiming her building was undergoing noisy repairs. The very first thing she did upon entering was glance toward the master bathroom door.
That night, as I lay in bed pretending to sleep, I overheard a whisper in the hallway between Diego and his mother.
“We need to clear out the old tools from the cabin in Ajusco before anyone decides to look up there.”
