“So you saved your image,” I said. “And buried her alone.”
“I paid for the surgery,” she snapped. “The incubator. The funeral.”
Lucy stepped forward.
“You did the minimum without getting your hands dirty.”
Valentina looked at me, angry now.
“What was I supposed to do? Bring them here? Introduce them at the wedding?”
Valeria’s voice broke through:
“We just wanted you to not lie.”
That hit harder than anything.
I took off the ring.
Set it on the table beside the ruined cake ribbon.
“The wedding’s off.”
Valentina didn’t argue.
Maybe because she knew this wasn’t about the wedding anymore.
It was about truth.
That night, we went back to St. Gabriel.
Lucy handled social services. Thomas found missing documents. I signed everything they put in front of me.
At 3 a.m., with a terrible cup of coffee and a sleeping baby against my chest, I watched Valeria finally fall asleep—her shoulders relaxed for the first time.
And I understood something clearly:
Valentina’s real secret wasn’t that she came from nothing.
It was that she had confused escaping her past… with erasing it.
The next week, I canceled the wedding.
Replaced flowers with legal paperwork.