Then a third time, slower, because your mind kept trying to turn the words into something less monstrous than what they clearly were.
Las Palmas was not random land. It was the only thing your father had ever left you that still felt like his hands were on it. Twenty-seven acres at the edge of Guadalajara, dry and stubborn and unimpressive to anyone who looked at it without context, but invaluable to anyone who knew what was coming. Your aunt Elena had told you months ago that a new highway expansion was rumored nearby, and land values would jump the moment the government announcement became public.
You had told exactly two people that.
Your aunt.
And Diego.
The second document was worse.
It granted Diego temporary power of representation over any negotiations involving Las Palmas, your apartment, and “all related liquid assets belonging to the undersigned spouse,” which was a polished legal phrase for the money in your name. He could meet with banks. He could sign provisional terms. He could speak for you “in the event of inconvenience, illness, or absence.” The paper was designed to make your disappearance into his advantage.
That was why they were panicking.
Not because their new bride had run away.
Because their new asset had.
Your hands went cold enough that you had to put the papers down and flex your fingers open and closed. That was when you noticed the initials at the bottom of two pages. Supposedly yours. Small, fast, careless little marks. The problem was, you never initialed legal documents that way. Your aunt Elena had trained that habit out of you when you were nineteen and signing your first apartment lease.
“Full signature or nothing,” she always said. “People steal initials. They hesitate in front of full names.”
You picked up the pages again and leaned in.
The signatures were yours.
The initials were not.
The room went quiet in a new way then, the kind of quiet that feels like a door locking. Diego had not just hidden papers in the wedding file. He had padded the file with pages you had never seen, added forged initials, and built an entire legal bridge out of distraction, trust, and ceremony. Somewhere between the champagne toast and the kiss, he had tried to move your father’s land into his family’s collapsing empire.
