Chapter 54 Chapter 54
Chapter 54 Chapter 54
The file’s loading bar filled in two seconds and the player’s timer started ticking, while Laura turned the laptop’s volume up to eighty percent and sat on the edge of the bed with her back straight and both hands resting on her left thigh.
The first four seconds of the audio consisted of background noise, distant voices, and the sound of a door closing, and then the voice came in.
It was Cavalier’s.
A deep, calm voice—the voice of the man who gave orders in the main studio without raising his voice, the voice from the calls he made to Derek when dinner was cut short. No tremor, no urgency, no hint of a coma.
“Manuel, if that Mendoza dies, her heart is mine. I need it before her daughter asks.”
Three seconds.
Then, a second voice—Manuel’s—older, rougher.
“Son, we’ll handle that through official channels; the donation form is already prepared—there’s no need to rush anything.”
“Manuel, I’ve been on the waiting list for three years—a signature isn’t enough for me; I need a body.”
—Son.
“Manuel, if the woman is going to die in three months, the difference between three months and now is a favor, not a crime.”
A long pause on the other end of the line. Then Manuel’s voice:
—Son, let me handle this my way. Don’t get involved.
—All right, Grandpa, but if you don’t get me the heart in thirty days, I’ll take care of it myself.
The sound of papers rustling. Footsteps. A door closing.
Silence.
The timer reached two minutes and forty-seven seconds, and the player's screen turned off on its own.
Laura didn’t move.
She remained seated on the edge of the bed with both hands resting on her left thigh, staring at the laptop’s black screen. The player’s progress bar was at zero. The file was silent.
She counted her breaths to her stomach three times, a nursing technique she used on patients in shock when they arrived in the ambulance.
It didn’t work for her.
She stood up. She took two steps toward the desk. She closed the laptop with her right hand without looking at the screen. She pulled the USB drive out of the port. She clenched it in her fist.
Five seconds.
Then she let herself fall to the floor.
Sitting against the side of the bed, legs stretched out, thick socks twisted, her robe open. The USB drive still in her fist, clenched so tightly that the plastic left a mark on her palm.
Bastard.
Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.
He’s a bastard, the old man’s a bastard, they’re both bastards, all three of them are bastards if she counted that son of a bitch Marcelo, all four of them are bastards if she included Alonso for leaving them.
If that Mendoza dies, her heart is mine.
That Mendoza.
That Mendoza was her mom. That Mendoza was the woman who had carried her to the point of exhaustion for eleven hours during childbirth. That Mendoza was the woman whose name was Elena Margarita Mendoza Aguilar, who had paid for her nursing school tuition by working double shifts at a private clinic in Queens, and who had died on a Monday at 9:30 p.m. after being hit by a black sedan three blocks from the hospital.
And the man sleeping in the suite thirty meters away—the very same man who, in forty-one days, had learned her preference for coffee without sugar, the left side of the bed, the rhythm of her breathing at seven past two—the man with the scar of his mother’s heart on his chest, that man—for seven months before the coma, he’d been telling his grandfather, “If that Mendoza dies, her heart is mine. I need it before her daughter asks.”
Her daughter.
Her.
Laura closed her eyes.
Acid rose up her throat, stung behind her ears, ran down her neck to her chest, and churned her empty stomach—she hadn’t touched her breakfast.
She threw up next to the bed.
Bile, orange juice from the day before—nothing else. She wiped it up with the sleeve of her robe without getting up. She stayed on the floor.
She placed her left hand on her belly, over her robe, on the muscles that hadn’t changed at all on the outside but already held someone inside.
Four weeks.
That child had been inside her for four weeks, according to Vargas, and had been conceived the night of the Plaza rescue, exactly twenty-eight days ago. That child had half the DNA of that bastard in the suite and the other half from her—she, the daughter of Elena Mendoza, the Mendoza from the audio recording, the Mendoza that man had needed dead so he could live.
Three seconds.
“Baby.”
Her voice came out hoarse, low, with bile still clinging to the back of her throat.
“Baby, I’m going to tell you something, and I’m going to say it just once because tomorrow I’m going to have to keep it to myself.”
Pause. He took three breaths.
“Your dad cheated on us, sweetheart.”
Pause.
“Your dad—before you even existed, before I even met him, before your grandmother died—had already decided with me what he was going to do with the two of us. He needed your grandmother to survive. And he used me to keep her close when she died.” And now here you are—proof that his plan worked out better than he ever imagined, because he didn’t even have to try; I fell right into his hands all on my own.
Long pause.
“Sweetheart, Mom doesn’t know what to do about this yet. But I swear to you by your grandmother—by your grandmother’s heart that that man carries in his chest—that we’re not going to stay and live with a bastard who bargained my mom away to his grandfather. We’re not leaving today because I can’t bring myself to move from this spot. But we’re not staying.”
There was a knock on the bedroom door.
“Honey.”
It was Gloria.
Laura didn’t answer.
“Honey, I brought you some water. Vargas told me you were supposed to drink it at eight.”
“Gloria, just leave it by the door. I’m not opening it today.”
“Sweetheart.”
“I’m not opening today, Gloria. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
Footsteps. Silence. The tray resting on the floor of the hallway on the outside.
Laura opened her fist. She looked at the USB drive in her palm.
She slipped it into the pocket of her robe. She stood up slowly, holding onto the edge of the bed. She walked to the small bathroom in the room. She rinsed her mouth three times with cold water. She splashed water on her face. She looked at herself in the mirror for five seconds.
The woman in the mirror had a green face, puffy eyes, a stained robe, and a tight-lipped mouth with two hard lines on either side.
“Bitch.”
She spoke to the woman in the mirror.
“You bitch, listen to me. You’re going to need to do three things. One, don’t cry in front of anyone today. Two, don’t let that USB drive leave your pocket until you know what to do with it. Three, don’t let that child inside you suffer because of your anger. You can do all three things. Okay?”
The woman in the mirror nodded.
“Good.”
She left the bathroom. She walked over to the desk. She opened the laptop again. She looked up Carla’s number. She dialed it.
Carla answered on the second ring.
“Lau.”
“Carla.”
“How are you?”
“Carla, just one thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“Is your cousin Antonio still working at the New York District Attorney’s Office?”
Pause on the other end.
“Yes, Lau. He’s been an assistant for three years.”
“Can you ask him for a professional favor? Without letting him know what it’s for.”
—Go ahead.
“I need the name of an audio analysis expert. A good one—the kind who examines recordings for the courts and determines whether they’ve been edited or not. Not Cavalier. Someone who’s never worked with the Cavaliers in their life.”
Long pause.
—Lau.
—Yes.
—What happened?
—Carla, I’ll tell you in person, but not today. Just get me the name.
—Okay. I’ll get it for you today.
—Thanks.
—Lau.
—Yeah.
—Are you okay?
—Carla, I’m not okay. But I’m in one piece.
—Good.
—And one more thing.
—Go ahead.
—If at any point this week my husband calls looking for me, don’t answer. Okay?
“Okay.”
She hung up.
She sat down again on the edge of the bed.
She looked at the USB drive in the palm of her left hand.
There were two possibilities for that USB drive. Either Cavalier had said that exact phrase to her seven months ago, and everything he’d told her over the past forty-one days was just an act—a man carrying out an old deal. Or someone—someone who had been waiting months for this moment—had edited a real audio recording to sow doubt in her mind and break up her marriage just when she was alone, pregnant, locked away in a remote wing of the mansion, and at odds with her husband.
Either was possible.
And Laura, sitting on the edge of the bed in the west wing bedroom at 8:10 a.m. on Sunday, four weeks pregnant, her jaw clenched and the USB drive clenched in her fist, wasn’t going to tell anyone until she knew which of the two was true.
Three seconds.
Her phone rang.
She looked at it.
On the screen, the name.
Vanessa Ashford.
Laura froze.
Vanessa had been in a maximum-security federal prison for forty-one days, with no authorized phone, no private visits, and no access to outside communication.
And she was calling her.
She pressed “answer.”
“Sister-in-law.”
The voice on the other end of the phone.
Vanessa.
“Have you heard it yet?”