From Substitute Wife to the CEO's Obsession novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: What the Clinic Knew
Ignacio Barrera sat on the floor of the east wing with his back against the foot of Lorena's bed.
The wardrobe doors stood open.
Three empty hangers still hung on the rail.
His phone lay face up on the carpet beside him, and the last message on it was his own.
Where are you? Please.
Nobody had answered it.
The door opened, and his mother stood in the light from the hall, in her pearls, at ten at night.
"You are sitting on the floor of the girl's room," Consuelo said.
"Sit down, Mamá, or go."
"I will stand." She folded her hands. "She has not signed anything. Good. Now listen to me. You do not call her, and you do not beg. A man who begs can be bought."
"By whom?"
"By anyone. Let her sit in that workshop and see how little she has. In a week she will come back for the house."
"The house is hers either way."
"What?"
He looked at the open wardrobe.
"You stood in a hospital room and told her to remember the thirty days," he said. "You said it loud enough for the nurses."
"I told her what you wrote."
"I wrote it for her. Not for you."
His mother's hands came apart.
"For her?" she said. "What did you write, Ignacio?"
He did not answer.
After a while she went out, and her heels were slower on the stairs than they had been coming up.
At six in the morning the phone lit up.
I'm safe. I'm at Pilar's. I need time. Please don't come.
He read it standing at the window.
Then he drove across the city anyway and parked across the street from the workshop in Colonia Americana.
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