Chapter 12 - Whispers in the prison yard
The concrete walls of Santa Martha Penitentiary hummed with the oppressive drone of industrial fans and distant iron doors clattering shut. Camila sat on the opposite side of the reinforced glass divider, her manicured nails gone, replaced by short, jagged edges, her designer gowns swapped for coarse prison-issue denim. Yet, despite the six months of hard confinement, the venom in her gaze had not dulled. When Lucía sat down on the metal stool with the telephone receiver pressed to her ear, Camila let out a dry, raspy laugh.
"Look at you," Camila sneered through the perforated speaker. "The maid in silk. You really think wearing our mother’s jewels makes you safe, don’t you?"
"I didn't come here to trade insults, Camila," Lucía said evenly, her voice steady and controlled. "A photograph arrived at the estate this morning. The delivery had no postage, only an hourglass stamped into red wax."
Camila froze. For a fraction of a second, the mocking grin vanished from her face, replaced by a raw, naked panic that she could not mask. Her fingers gripped the plastic receiver so hard her knuckles turned stark white.
"You're lying," Camila hissed, darting her eyes toward the guards standing along the cinderblock wall. "You came here to play head games because you know I'm appealing my sentence."
"Dr. Ramos wasn't working alone, and neither were you," Lucía leaned closer to the glass, her eyes boring into her former tormentor. "There is a second doctor in the maternity ward photo. Wearing a ring with twin platinum wolves. Who is he, Camila?"
Camila swallowed hard, her chest heaving beneath the rough fabric of her uniform. She leaned against the glass, lowering her voice until it was barely a whisper over the scratchy telephone wire.
"You think I stole you out of that crib? I was a child, Lucía! I was barely seven years old when you vanished! Do you honestly believe a seven-year-old girl bribed the chief of obstetrics and forged a state death certificate?"
Lucía kept her breathing level, refusing to show the shock vibrating through her chest. "Then who gave you the trust fund documents? Who paid the offshore accounts that funded your lifestyle while mother was kept weak on sedatives?"
Camila’s lips parted, trembling slightly. "If I tell you, they won't just keep me in this cell. They will make sure I don't survive until breakfast." She glanced frantically toward the guard station at the end of the hall. "Check the estate's private vault in the cellar. The ledger behind father’s portrait isn't empty. Look at the payments from October fourteenth, nineteen ninety-nine. Look at who signed the checks."
Before Lucía could ask another question, the guard stepped forward, tapping his baton against the metal partition.
"Time is up. Step away from the glass."
May you like
Camila stood up quickly, but as the guard took her arm, she leaned her mouth directly against the speaker hole one last time.
"He never died in that plane crash, Lucía. He walked away."
