Ricardo remained motionless, calculating. As if he somehow understood that he was in control.
Maya took the baby to her room in the service area. It was small: a single bed, an old closet, a window facing the service entrance. But it was clean. It smelled of soap, or of lies.
She arranged soft towels, made a “pile” with pillows and left Sati with the scepter.
The baby whimpered… and then, for the first time in weeks, calmed down.
Maya’s eyes filled with tears. She sat down beside him, her hand on his chest, feeling a rhythm that was finally fighting.
“That… that was it,” he whispered. “You just needed to be safe.”
He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. He stayed watching him like someone watching a spark in the middle of a storm.
At six in the morning, the door suddenly opened.
Ricardo was already dressed in a suit, his face red with rage.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing with my son?” she spat. “You’re fired. Get out.”
Maya got up slowly and stood between him and the bed.
—No, call DIF first.
Ricardo clenched his jaw, and his anger shifted to something colder.
—You’re a slacker employee. Who’s going to believe you and us?
Maya held his gaze.
—I have photos. I have the baby’s marks. I have the history of “colic” that the pediatrician downplayed. And I have the mattress up there, full of maggots.
Victoria appeared behind Ricardo, her eyes swollen, without makeup. It was the first time she had seen… human.
—Ricardo —he said in a low voice—. Look at your son.
Ricardo looked at the sleeping baby, breathing calmly in the maid’s room. And something in his face broke. Not from tenderness, but from a blow of reality.
“I… didn’t know,” she said, almost to herself. “The doctor said it was colic. I thought—”
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