Still.
Still.
With her eyes slowly filling with pain.
“How old is he?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
Valeria swallowed.
-Five.
Alejandro closed his eyes for a moment, as if he were trying to contain something too big to remain inside him.
Then he looked at her again.
“Five years…” she repeated softly. “Five years in which you took my son from me.”
Those words pierced her like knives.
“It wasn’t like that…” she whispered.
“So what happened, Valeria?” he asked, this time with a much more terrifying calm. “Because you disappeared without a trace. You quit. You moved to another country. You changed your number. Do you know how many times I tried to find you?”
She opened her lips, but couldn’t answer.
Because the truth was that I did know.
Or at least I had suspected it.
During her first few months in Japan, she had lived in constant fear. Every time the phone rang or someone knocked on the door, she felt that Alejandro had finally found her.
But time passed… and no one arrived.
And little by little she began to convince herself that he had simply forgotten about her.
Until now.
Matthew spoke innocently again:
—Mommy… why are you crying?
Valeria realized that tears were silently falling down her cheeks.
She quickly knelt in front of her son and wiped his face.
—It’s okay, love.
But Alejandro was already observing every detail.
The way she protected the child.
