Part 2

“I tried.”

She looked toward the restaurant door again.

“Your son made sure I couldn’t reach you. And there’s something else you need to know.”

I waited.

Lucía gripped my arm.

“Don Ernesto, Adrián has been waiting for you to die.”

My stomach tightened.

“What are you talking about?”

She hesitated, then glanced at the trembling hand I’d been trying to hide all evening.

“I know you’ve been sick. I know about the dizziness and the weakness.”

“How?”

Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.

“Because I saw Adrián and another woman preparing something they were putting in your morning coffee.”

For a moment, I couldn’t speak.

Every morning for months, my son had brought me coffee at the office, insisting that I was working too hard and needed someone to look after me.

I’d always thought it was a small act of love.

Standing in that courtyard, looking at my frightened, pregnant daughter-in-law, I began to wonder whether I’d misunderstood everything.

Part 2: My Pregnant Daughter-in-Law Revealed What My Son Put in My Coffee—Then He Called With a Terrifying Warning

I stared at Lucía, struggling to understand what she’d just told me.

For six months, I’d trusted Adrián to bring me coffee almost every morning. I’d believed he was worried about my health, especially after my dizzy spells became more frequent.

Now my daughter-in-law was telling me those visits might be the reason I was sick.

“Who was helping him?” I asked.

Lucía glanced toward the restaurant entrance.

“Verónica Montes.”

I knew that name immediately.

Two years earlier, I’d fired Verónica from my construction company after discovering that she’d submitted fraudulent expense reports. Adrián had promised me she would never work with us again.

“Why was she with Adrián?”

“Because they’re having an affair,” Lucía answered. “She was living in our house before he forced me out.”

She explained that Adrián had initially introduced Verónica as an outside business consultant. Eventually, Verónica began spending nights in their guest room.

Lucía suspected something was wrong when she discovered Verónica’s clothes in their bedroom.

“One evening, she wore the dress Adrián bought me for our anniversary,” Lucía said. “When I confronted him, he told me I was imagining things.”

But the affair wasn’t the only secret she’d uncovered.

As an independent accountant, Lucía occasionally reviewed financial documents connected to my company.

Several months earlier, she’d discovered eighteen million pesos in suspicious transfers to suppliers she couldn’t verify.

“I warned Adrián that someone might be stealing from the business,” she explained. “He became furious. Two weeks later, two employees were fired for those same transactions.”

I remembered Luis Mendoza and Rafael Torres.

I’d personally approved their dismissals after Adrián presented documents suggesting they’d misused company funds.

I hadn’t questioned his evidence.

“Do you still have copies of those records?” I asked.

Lucía nodded.

“Some. I hid them before Adrián took everything.”

Then she told me what she’d overheard shortly before being thrown out.

Verónica had been discussing a chemical product with Adrián, saying that I would soon become too ill to continue managing the company.

“She had several small containers,” Lucía said. “Adrián asked how long it would take before you couldn’t work anymore.”