That night, you return home with the adulterated bottle inside your purse and a scream trapped behind your teeth.
The car ride to Las Lomas feels endless. Mexico City lights slide across the window like blurred warnings. Your hand rests on your bag the entire time, fingers pressed against the leather as if Alejandro might somehow reach through traffic and steal the proof before you arrive.
When the car stops outside your house, you sit still for one second.
Breathe.
Think.
Pretend.
That last word becomes your shield.
Pretend you know nothing.
Pretend your husband is not waiting inside with poison dressed as care.
Pretend the woman who smiled across the dinner table has not spent weeks helping him erase your mind.
The front door opens before you touch the bell.
Alejandro stands there in rolled-up sleeves, hair slightly damp, face full of rehearsed concern.
“There you are,” he says. “I was getting worried.”
You want to look at his hands.
The same hands that opened your purse.
The same hands that replaced your capsules.
The same hands that held yours at dinner while planning to make you seem insane.
Instead, you smile weakly.
“I’m just tired.”
His expression softens immediately.
Not with love.
With satisfaction.
“I told you,” he says, guiding you inside with one hand at your back. “You’ve been overdoing it.”
Doña Carmen sits in the living room with tea already prepared, wearing a pale silk robe and the expression of a woman who believes the world is cleaner when controlled by people like her. Daniela sits curled on the sofa, barefoot, young and pretty and poisonous, scrolling through her phone like she has not helped destroy your life capsule by capsule.
They both look up when you enter.
Carmen smiles.
“Did you find your bag, mi niña?”
Mi niña.
The false tenderness nearly makes you laugh.
“Yes,” you say. “The manager had kept it safe.”
At the word manager, Daniela’s eyes flicker.
Small.
