Chapter 5 - WHAT HE DID AFTER MY DIAGNOSIS
Six months earlier, I had sat beside Alejandro in our bedroom and told him the neurologist had found a tumor.
I remembered his face.
He went pale.
He held me.
He cried.
Then he promised:
“We’ll fight this together.”
Apparently, he had also begun preparing paperwork.
The power of attorney had been notarized seventeen days after my diagnosis.
I had never signed it.
The notary was someone named Martin Keller.
Rebecca already had her staff investigating him.
“What could Alejandro do with this?”
“Potentially quite a lot, depending on where he presented it.”
“Could he touch my trust?”
“Your father structured the primary trust carefully. A general power of attorney cannot simply override its protections.”
For the first time that day, I breathed.
“But?”
Rebecca’s expression remained serious.
“He may have used it elsewhere.”
We soon discovered where.
Alejandro had presented the document to two financial institutions.
One rejected it because my trust manager requested direct confirmation from me.
The other allowed him to open a secured line of credit using a jointly held investment account as collateral.
Amount:
$650,000.
Outstanding balance:
$412,000.
I gripped the hospital blanket.
“What did he spend four hundred thousand dollars on?”
“We’re tracing it.”
I already suspected the answer.
Claudia.
The townhouse.
Children.
His business.
But the first major payment went somewhere unexpected.
$150,000 to a medical investment company called Novaris Health Partners.
Alejandro had never mentioned it.
Rebecca searched the corporate records.
One of the managing partners was Dr. Marcus Feld.
I knew Marcus.
He had been Alejandro’s friend for years.
We had vacationed together.
He and his wife attended our anniversary dinner.
“What does Novaris do?”
“Outpatient surgical centers.”
I looked toward the bandages around my head.
The timing disturbed me.
The investment had been made only four months after my diagnosis.
“Why would Alejandro invest there?”
Rebecca didn’t know.
Then another transfer appeared.
$80,000.
Recipient:
Moreno Family Services LLC.
Claudia.
She had her own company.
Registered eighteen months earlier.
Business description:
Lifestyle consulting.
Sofia actually laughed.
“What does that even mean?”
In this case, apparently it meant receiving my money.
Then Rebecca found something that made her stop.
A recurring payment had gone from Vance Strategic Holdings to an attorney named Paul Hendricks.
Family law.
“His divorce lawyer?”
“Possibly.”
The payments began eleven months earlier.
Long before my diagnosis.
Long before Alejandro claimed Claudia’s one-year-old son forced him to rethink his life.
He had been preparing to leave me before I ever learned I was sick.
The tumor had not created his betrayal.
It had created an opportunity.
That realization hurt more than I expected.
Then Rebecca received a call.
She listened for several minutes.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She ended the call slowly.
“The notary who supposedly witnessed your power of attorney says he never met you.”
My heart started pounding.
“Then who did he meet?”
Rebecca looked directly at me.
“A woman claiming to be Camila Vance.”
I understood immediately.
“Claudia?”
“We don’t know.”
But the notary remembered one thing clearly.
The woman had a small tattoo behind her left ear.
A crescent moon.
May you like
I had seen that tattoo hundreds of times.
Claudia got it when we were nineteen.
