CHAPTER 1 – "FORGIVE ME"
The scream came first.
Then the darkness.
Then the silence.
Eleven-year-old Valeria could still hear her mother's voice echoing inside her head.
"Forgive me!"
And then she was gone.
Gone with Diego.
Gone without her.
A piece of wood crushed Valeria's leg. Dust filled her lungs. She tried to move, but every breath felt like knives inside her chest.
"Mom!" she screamed.
No answer.
Only the sound of the house collapsing around her.
Then everything went black.
When Valeria woke up, she was in a hospital.
Her leg was wrapped in bandages.
Machines beeped beside her.
A woman she didn't know was crying near the bed.
It took several seconds before Valeria recognized her grandmother.
"Thank God…" Grandma whispered. "You're alive."
Valeria looked around.
"Where's Mom?"
The old woman froze.
"Where's Diego?"
No answer.
Then her father entered the room.
Ernesto looked ten years older.
His face was covered in cuts.
His eyes were red.
"Dad… where's Mom?"
He swallowed hard.
"They're safe."
Valeria smiled weakly.
"Then why didn't she come?"
The room became painfully quiet.
Finally, Ernesto sat beside her.
"Your mother… left."
"What do you mean?"
"She took Diego and disappeared."
Valeria stared at him.
No.
No.
That wasn't possible.
"She'll come back," Valeria said.
Nobody answered.
"She has to come back."
Silence.
And in that terrible silence, something inside her broke forever.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
No calls.
No letters.
No explanations.
Nothing.
The police searched.
No trace.
Some people said Mariana had died.
Others said she had run away with another man.
Some whispered she had always loved Diego more.
Valeria heard everything.
And every rumor became another knife in her heart.
One afternoon she walked into her parents' bedroom.
She opened the old metal box she had discovered months earlier.
Inside were the papers.
The adoption papers.
Her name.
A date.
A signature.
And one sentence:
"The child was abandoned at birth and placed under temporary custody."
Abandoned.
The word burned her eyes.
She suddenly remembered the earthquake.
The way her mother looked at her.
The way she chose Diego.
The way she ran.
A terrible thought filled her mind.
Maybe…
Maybe she never wanted me.
Maybe she only adopted me because she felt sorry for me.
Maybe I was never really her daughter.
Tears rolled down her face.
She closed the box.
And from that day on, she stopped calling Mariana "Mom."
In her heart, she became simply…
The woman who left.
The years passed.
Valeria learned to survive.
She helped her father.
Studied hard.
Worked after school.
Never complained.
But she never smiled the same way again.
At sixteen, she was the best student in her class.
At nineteen, she earned a scholarship to study law in Puebla.
At twenty-three, she became one of the youngest attorneys in the city.
People admired her.
They called her strong.
But nobody knew the truth.
Every night she still dreamed about the earthquake.
Every night she heard the same words.
"Forgive me…"
And every time she woke up, she hated her mother a little more.
Twelve years after the earthquake, on a rainy October evening, Valeria returned home from work.
Her father was making coffee.
Grandma was knitting by the window.
Everything seemed normal.
Then someone knocked.
Three slow knocks.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Grandma frowned.
"It's late."
Ernesto opened the door.
And the cup fell from his hand.
It shattered on the floor.
Valeria looked up.
A woman stood outside.
Thin.
Soaked by the rain.
Older.
Her hair streaked with gray.
Tears streamed down her face.
In her trembling hands she held a faded photograph.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then the woman whispered:
"Valeria…"
The voice.
Even after twelve years…
She knew that voice.
The blood drained from her face.
"No…" she whispered.
The woman took a step forward.
"Please… let me explain."
Valeria couldn't breathe.
It was her.
Her mother.
Mariana.
The woman who abandoned her.
The woman who chose another child.
The woman who had disappeared for twelve years.
She was back.
And she was crying.
But what happened next would destroy everything Valeria believed.
Because Mariana wasn't alone.
A teenage boy stepped out of the darkness behind her.
He looked exactly like Diego.
Except…
he was in a wheelchair.
And around his neck hung a hospital bracelet.
Mariana collapsed to her knees.
Her voice broke.
"I didn't abandon you…"
She looked directly into Valeria's eyes.
"I ran because someone was trying to kill both of you."
Lightning illuminated the sky.
The entire house froze.
Then Mariana whispered the words that changed everything:
"The earthquake wasn't an accident…"
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"And Diego is dying."
TO BE CONTINUED… 🔥
