That afternoon the first court order was requested.

By evening the second arrived.

Álvaro was temporarily barred from removing the twins from your care or contacting hospital personnel about discharge arrangements without legal coordination. The family court judge, a woman with a reputation for hating theatrics, was particularly uninterested in a husband who tried to negotiate maternal disappearance before his daughters were a week old.

Then came the board call.

You took it from your hospital bed wearing a borrowed robe and a face too pale for vanity. Mateo sat at your left. Verónica at your right. Your mother rocked one of the babies near the window while the other slept beside you. The visual, Mateo said, was not accidental.

On screen appeared three board members and one investor representative. Álvaro joined late.

He froze when he saw the room.

Not because you looked powerful. You didn’t. You looked post-surgical, exhausted, and stitched together by medication and fury. But vulnerability on a screen can be devastating when the other side expects silence. Behind your weakness was evidence. Behind his confidence was audio.

“You scheduled this?” he asked, glaring at you.

“No,” Mateo said. “I did.”

The investor representative, a man named Ortega who cared about only two things in life, optics and exposure, cleared his throat.

“There are allegations of coercive signatures, governance irregularities, and unauthorized transfers,” he said. “We need clarification.”

Álvaro did what men like him always do when first cornered.
He performed offense.

He said you were confused after surgery. He said your maternal state was unstable. He said Lucía had accompanied him purely as a witness out of concern. He said the documents were misunderstood. He said the company could not pause because of “domestic emotional chaos.”

Mateo asked if he denied bringing custodial documents to a hospitalized woman seventy-two hours after an emergency C-section.

Álvaro said, “That’s a dramatic way to phrase it.”

Mateo played the audio from the hospital lobby.

She was always replaceable. The children are not.

Silence fell so hard it almost had shape.

Ortega removed his glasses.
One board member looked down.
Another muttered something that might have been a prayer.

Lucía, who had joined from another device, went white.