Chapter 1 - OVER THE EDGE
I did not remember hitting the ground.
I remembered falling.
Cold night air.
The terrace disappearing above me.
The rope around my waist tightening.
Then branches.
Pain.
Darkness.
When I opened my eyes, I was not on the stone courtyard below.
I was caught in the thick upper branches of an ornamental magnolia growing against the villa wall.
My left shoulder screamed when I moved.
My bound wrists were scraped raw.
I could barely breathe without pain.
But I was alive.
Above me, Nicolás shouted my name.
“Sofía!”
I tried to answer.
Nothing came out except a broken gasp.
Then:
“Sofía!”
“Nicolás...”
His face appeared over the railing.
“Sofía!”
“Don’t—”
I coughed.
Pain exploded through my ribs.
“Don’t move!” he shouted.
I almost laughed.
I was wedged twelve feet above the courtyard with my wrists tied.
Movement was not high on my list.
Then I heard Leonor.
“She attacked me!”
Even hanging from a tree after being thrown off a terrace, I recognized the instinct.
Rewrite first.
Explain later.
Nicolás turned away from the railing.
“What?”
“She attacked me. She went insane.”
I forced air into my lungs.
“She pushed me!”
Silence.
Then Leonor shouted:
“She’s lying!”
Nicolás looked down again.
“Sofía, stay still.”
He disappeared.
I heard doors opening inside the villa.
Footsteps.
A few minutes later Nicolás appeared below with two household employees.
They positioned a ladder.
Nobody tried some heroic movie rescue.
They stabilized me until emergency responders arrived.
I was lowered carefully.
My shoulder was dislocated.
Two ribs fractured.
My right ankle badly sprained.
Cuts covered my hands and face.
No spinal injury.
No internal bleeding.
Lucky.
That word would follow me for months.
At the hospital, a nurse asked:
“Who tied your hands?”
“Leonor Velasco.”
“Who pushed you?”
“Leonor Velasco.”
“Why?”
I looked toward Nicolás.
He was standing near the curtain.
His black suit was dirty from helping below the tree.
“Because I found out what she was doing to Mateo.”
His face tightened.
Mateo Velasco was six.
Nicolás’s only son.
And for the previous eight months, I had been helping care for him.
Officially, I was hired as a household caregiver.
Unofficially, I became the person Mateo trusted when his stomach hurt.
When he became dizzy.
When his hands trembled.
When he woke crying because he felt sick again.
Doctors had investigated.
Bloodwork.
Allergies.
Gastrointestinal problems.
Viral illnesses.
Nothing explained why Mateo repeatedly became sick at the villa and improved when he spent several days elsewhere.
Then, that afternoon, I saw Leonor carrying a small bottle from the garden-storage room.
The label identified a concentrated garden chemical.
She poured something from it into a smaller unmarked container.
I did not see her give it to Mateo.
That distinction mattered.
What I saw was suspicious.
Not proof of poisoning.
So I searched for something stronger.
And I found it.
A second bottle hidden behind cleaning products near the service pantry.
The same chemical.
Beside it:
Mateo’s favorite honey bottle.
I photographed both.
Then I confronted Leonor.
Stupid.
Dangerously stupid.
I should have called Nicolás.
I should have preserved what I found.
Instead, anger made me reckless.
Leonor denied everything.
Then she saw my phone.
She grabbed for it.
I ran.
She caught me near the terrace.
The struggle escalated.
She used decorative utility rope stored near the terrace planters to bind my wrists after striking me with a heavy candleholder.
Then she tried to get my phone.
I had slipped it under a terrace cushion.
She never found it.
That was why she dragged me toward the edge.
She wanted me to tell her where it was.
At the hospital, Nicolás stared at me.
“Where’s your phone?”
“Terrace.”
“Where?”
“Under the left bench cushion.”
His jaw tightened.
“What’s on it?”
“Pictures.”
“Of what?”
“The bottle.”
He went completely still.
Then I said the part that frightened him most.
“And a video.”
May you like
Leonor had thought she threw the evidence over the terrace with me.
She was wrong.
