Chapter 3 - The Wolf at the Door
The room seemed to shrink as Hector stepped closer to the bed. The scent of white lilies—funeral flowers—filled the small hospital room, making it hard for me to breathe.
"Stay right there, Mr. Santos," Detective Cole said immediately, rising from his chair and placing himself between my father and my bed. "You were explicitly told not to enter this wing without an escort."
Hector didn't even look at the detective. His eyes remained locked on mine, cold and calculating behind a veil of crocodile tears.
"Detective, please," Hector said smoothly, resting a hand over his heart. "I am a grieving father. My daughter has been in a coma for two weeks. Do you have any idea what my wife and I have suffered? Teresa is beside herself with grief. She didn't mean what she said earlier—she’s just overwhelmed by stress."
"She spat on her," Cole said coldly. "And you are currently the primary suspect in a felony assault and attempted murder investigation."
Hector let out a soft, pitying sigh, shaking his head. "Detective, you don't understand our family. Valeria has been struggling with severe psychological issues for years. She has paranoid delusions. She dragged my name through the mud because I refused to keep funding her lifestyle."
He looked past Cole, fixing his dark, piercing eyes directly onto me. The subtle threat in his posture was unmistakable.
"Valeria, darling," Hector said, his voice dropping into the low, authoritative register he had used to intimidate me since I was a child. "Tell the detective the truth. You had a terrible episode, didn't you? You fell down the garage stairs after throwing a panic attack. I tried to catch you, but you fell onto the concrete. You know your old father would never lay a hand on you."
I gripped the hospital sheet so tightly my knuckles turned white. My whole body shook with terror, but beneath that terror, something new was beginning to burn.
Anger.
For twenty-eight years, I had shrunk under that voice. I had let him dictate where I went to college, who I dated, and how I lived my life. I had let him make my mother complicit in his cruelty. But standing there, smelling those funeral lilies, I realized he didn't view me as his daughter. He viewed me as a threat that needed to be eliminated.
"I didn't fall down the stairs, Dad," I said, my voice hoarse, cracking, but loud enough to startle the uniformed officers at the door.
Hector's expression hardened for a fraction of a second before he recovered his gentle smile. "Sweetheart, you hit your head very hard. You're confused—"
"You hit me with an iron tire iron," I said, the memory snapping into sharp, terrifying focus as I looked at his hands. "You pinned my arm against the workbench and smashed my wrist because I wouldn't give you my thumbprint to unlock my phone."
Detective Cole immediately stepped closer to Hector. "Mr. Santos, you need to step out of this room right now."
Hector’s mask finally slipped. The grieving father vanished, replaced by the predator I knew so well. His lips pulled back into a tight, vicious line.
"You always were an ungrateful little bitch, Valeria," Hector spat in a low, poisonous whisper that only I and Cole could hear. "You think a badge is going to protect you? You don't have the drive. You don't have the proof. And when you leave this hospital, you have nowhere to go."
"That's enough!" Detective Cole barked, placing his hand on his holstered firearm. "Officers, remove him from the floor immediately! If he steps back onto this level, arrest him for obstruction!"
The two uniformed officers gripped Hector's arms. He didn't fight them. He simply adjusted his designer cuffs, offered me a cold, mocking smile, and allowed himself to be escorted out into the hallway.
I collapsed back against the pillows, my chest heaving, my heart rate spiking on the monitor.
"You did good, Valeria," Cole said softly, rushing to my side and adjusting my oxygen tube. "You stood your ground."
"He's right about one thing," I gasped, tears burning my eyes. "He controls everything. My apartment lease is in his name. My bank accounts are tied to his business. I have no money, no home, and my mother hates me."
"You have the truth," Cole asserted firmly. "And as long as I am breathing, he will not touch you again. But we need that drive, Valeria. Before he finds it."
I closed my eyes, picturing my apartment.
I remembered coming home from the motel. I remembered plugging the SD card from my camera into my laptop. I saved the video file onto a small, silver USB drive shaped like a key.
Where did I put the key?
Suddenly, my eyes snapped open.
"The safety deposit box," I whispered. "My grandmother's old bank box at First National. The one my mother gave me when I turned eighteen. He doesn't know it exists."
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Cole’s eyes lit up. "Where is the key to the box?"
"It's hidden," I said, feeling a surge of hope for the first time in fourteen days. "Inside my grandmother's porcelain music box... sitting on the bookshelf in my parents' living room."
