Chapter 4 - The Midnight Test
The plan was insane. Gonzalo was a forty-six-year-old man who had been bedridden for two months, poisoned daily, and deprived of muscle stimulation. Expecting him to stand, let alone move, was medically impossible.
But survival doesn't care about medical odds.
That night, after the rest of the estate went dark at 11:00 PM, I slipped back into Gonzalo’s room. I carried a small backpack filled with extra saline bottles, physical therapy resistance bands I had found in the mansion’s gym, and a bottle of high-protein liquid nutrition I had stolen from the pantry.
Leo was fast asleep in my room downstairs, monitored by a baby monitor app I had set up on my old phone.
"Mr. Gonzalo," I whispered, stepping up to the bed.
He opened his eyes immediately. He hadn't been sleeping; he had been lying in the dark, mentally forcing his nerves to fire.
"Is... the hallway... clear?" he asked, his voice noticeably stronger than it had been four hours ago. Flushing his IV line had stopped the cumulative damage of Barragán's toxin.
"Elena is asleep in her quarters on the third floor," I said, setting my bag on the bed. "Mauricio left an hour ago with his briefcase—he went to a nightclub downtown with his friends. The house security guards are stationed at the outer gatehouse, not inside."
"Good," Gonzalo said, bracing himself. "Unplug... the monitors."
I carefully disconnected the heart rate sensor from his finger and turned off the audible alarm on the bedside telemetry unit, wrapping the speaker in a thick towel to muffle any residual beeps.
"Now... help me sit up."
I reached under his shoulders, bracing my feet against the floorboards, and pulled.
Gonzalo groaned, his teeth grinding together as he fought against the atrophy in his core muscles. He weighed nearly one hundred and ninety pounds of dense frame, and even in his emaciated state, moving him was a massive physical effort.
Slowly, inches at a time, we got him into an upright sitting position on the edge of the mattress.
Sweat poured down his forehead, soaking his linen nightshirt. He sat there swaying slightly, his hands gripping the edge of the mattress so hard his fingernails turned white.
"My legs..." he panted, staring down at his bare feet resting on the cold hardwood floor. "They feel like... lead blocks."
"That’s the paralysis breaking down," I explained, pulling a pair of heavy rubber resistance bands from my bag. "The saline is washing the toxin out of your nerve endings, but your muscles are dormant. We have to force blood into them."
I wrapped the band around the arch of his right foot and held the ends tightly. "Push against my hands. As hard as you can."
Gonzalo closed his eyes, his breathing ragged. He pushed.
Nothing happened. His foot remained entirely motionless.
"Again," I urged him softly. "Think about Mauricio holding that red ledger. Think about him sitting in your chair, laughing about your life's work. Push!"
A surge of anger swept across Gonzalo’s features. His neck muscles strained, veins popping along his jawline.
His foot flexed forward an inch.
"Yes!" I whispered, tears of relief pricking my eyes. "Again, Mr. Gonzalo! Do it again!"
For two grueling hours in the pitch-black bedroom, we worked in total secrecy.
I massaged the stiff tendons in his calves, forced him to do seated leg lifts, and fed him small sips of high-protein nutrition to restore his blood sugar. With every passing thirty minutes, as the lingering chemical blockade cleared from his motor cortex, his nerve signals fired stronger.
By 2:30 AM, Gonzalo stood up.
He leaned heavily on my shoulders, his arms wrapped around my neck, his whole body trembling like a leaf in a hurricane, but his feet were planted squarely on the floor.
He took one short, agonizing step forward.
Then another.
He stumbled, his knees buckling, and I caught him with everything I had, slamming our backs against the edge of the wardrobe to keep us from crashing to the floor.
We slid down against the wooden doors, breathing heavily into the dark quiet of the room.
Gonzalo leaned his head back against the wood, a quiet, guttural laugh escaping his throat—the first genuine laugh he had let out in sixty days.
"I can walk," he whispered, turning his head to look at me. "I can stand on my own two feet."
"You did it," I breathed, wiping sweat from my eyes. "You really did it."
Gonzalo looked at me with an intensity that made my breath catch. For weeks, I had seen him only as a helpless victim, a patient I was paid to clean and monitor. But sitting on the floor beside him in the dark, I saw the man he actually was: the formidable, unyielding founder of a multi-million-dollar empire who had clawed his way up from nothing.
"Mariana," he said, his voice dropping into a deep, gravelly register. "Why are you doing this? You could have taken your paycheck, stayed quiet, and walked away when I died. Mauricio would have given you a severance package just to clear you out."
I looked down at my hands, rough and calloused from years of hard manual labor.
"My father was an honest man, Mr. Gonzalo," I said softly. "He ran a small mechanic shop. When he got sick three years ago, his business partner forged his signature on a predatory loan document, stole the shop, and left us with six hundred thousand pesos in debt. My father died in a public hospital ward believing he was a failure, while the man who stole from him bought a mansion in the suburbs."
I turned my head to look Gonzalo straight in the eyes.
"I watched a bad man steal my father's life while nobody did anything to stop it. I promise you, I won't sit by and watch it happen to you."
Gonzalo stared at me for a long moment, something profound shifting in his expression. The coldness that usually guarded his eyes thawed completely.
"You're a remarkable woman, Mariana," he said quietly. "Your father would be immensely proud of you."
Before I could answer, a loud, sharp noise echoed from the driveway below the balcony.
The heavy iron security gates were opening.
I scrambled up onto my feet and hurried to the window, pulling the curtain back an inch.
A red sports car was pulling up to the front entrance. Mauricio was stepping out of the vehicle, unsteady on his feet, holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and his leather briefcase in the other.
He was coming back early.
"He's home," I whispered in panic, spinning back toward Gonzalo. "He's coming upstairs!"
Gonzalo’s face turned stone cold.
"Help me back to the bed," he commanded softly. "Fast."
I rushed over, hooked my arms under his shoulders, and dragged him across the room toward the bed. We moved with frantic speed, every second ticking like a time bomb.
I pulled him onto the mattress, arranged his legs under the sheets, plugged the heart rate monitor back onto his finger, and pulled the blanket up to his chin just as the heavy brass doorknob began to turn.
I threw myself onto the floor beside the bed, grabbing a bottle of lotion and pretending to massage Gonzalo’s motionless foot.
The door swung open with a bang.
Mauricio stood in the doorway, smelling strongly of expensive alcohol and cologne, his hair disheveled, his eyes bloodshot.
He leaned against the doorframe, looking at me with a drunk, predatory sneer.
"Still working, little maid?" he slurred, taking a drink directly from the champagne bottle.
"Just... applying his night lotion, sir," I said, keeping my voice entirely steady as I rubbed Gonzalo’s ankle.
Mauricio stumbled into the room, walking up to the side of the bed. He reached down, grabbed Gonzalo’s jaw with his hand, and forced his head to turn toward him.
Gonzalo’s face remained completely slack, his eyes half-closed, perfectly faking the vacant, mindless expression of a dying comatose patient.
Mauricio laughed softly—a cruel, hideous sound.
"Look at you," Mauricio sneered into his uncle's motionless face. "The great Gonzalo Alcázar. Built a kingdom, and now you're dying in your own piss while a poor servant rubs your feet. You always thought you were smarter than me, didn't you? You always said I lacked discipline."
Mauricio slapped Gonzalo’s cheek lightly with the palm of his hand.
My heart stopped. My hands clenched into tight fists at my sides. I wanted to scream, to tear Mauricio's eyes out, but I forced myself to stay glued to the floor.
"Tomorrow night, Uncle," Mauricio whispered, leaning down until his lips were inches from Gonzalo’s ear. "Tomorrow night, Dr. Barragán gives you the final dose. And on Friday, I take everything you ever built."
Mauricio dropped his hand, letting Gonzalo’s head fall back onto the pillow, turned around, and stumbled out of the room, leaving the door wide open behind him.
I waited until his footsteps disappeared down the hall to his master wing.
I immediately stood up, rushing to Gonzalo’s side. "Are you okay?"
Gonzalo slowly opened his eyes. The vacant look was completely gone, replaced by an icy, ruthless fury that radiated from his entire body.
May you like
He raised his hand and wiped Mauricio’s touch off his cheek.
"He thinks Friday is his victory," Gonzalo growled softly, looking at me with an terrifying calm. "Mariana... tomorrow afternoon, when Barragán comes with that final dose... we are going to set a trap that will destroy them all."
