PART 3
My mother sat down because she could no longer stand up.
Weeping, she told me that twenty years earlier, in the middle of a storm, an elegant woman had arrived at a borrowed house with a baby in her arms, two trusted men, and terror in her eyes. That woman was Celia. The baby was me.
He begged her to take me out of Octavio Beltrán’s life.
He left her money, papers, contacts, but according to my mother, none of that was what convinced her.
“It was the way he let go of you,” he told me. “Like his soul was breaking.”
My father then spoke, firmly, looking me in the eyes:
—I always knew you weren’t related to me by blood. And never, not for a single day, was it hard for me to love you.
That phrase destroyed me more than any DNA test.
I wanted to hate them. I really did. But while my mother wept in front of me and my father stood firm as an old wall, I understood something unbearable: yes, they lied to me… but they lied to me while loving me.
I went to a guesthouse in the next town for a few weeks. There, I received a folder sent by Celia: the annulment proceedings had already begun, along with evidence, documents, and a handwritten letter. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t justify herself. She only said that she had arrived late, in the wrong place, and in the worst possible way to a motherhood that had been buried for twenty years.
Days later, a trusted man of his called me.
—Octavio Beltrán already knows that you exist.
My blood ran cold.
That night I saw an unfamiliar van parked outside the boarding house for too long, and I realized the threat was real. I didn’t call Celia. I called my father.
—Dad… I need help.
He arrived in less than an hour. On the way, without taking my eyes off the wheel, I asked him:
—Did you ever regret raising someone else’s child?
He didn’t even think about it.
—Never. You are my son because I raised you, because I took care of you, and because I chose you every day.
After that, I stopped running away.
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