“He thinks I’m not going,” you say.
Vega’s mouth twitches. “Good,” he says. “Let’s keep it that way.”
So the trap begins.
For three days the house performs your decline. Curtains stay closed. Meals remain on schedule. Carmen still comes at dawn with towels and warm water, except now she also helps you sit straighter, move farther, hold your spoon longer. Teresa runs the household like a military campaign. Dr. Salazar changes your medication in secret. Vega comes after dark. The security captain, it turns out, is loyal to old payroll and older loyalties, not to Mauricio’s recent swagger.
And Sofía becomes your shadow.
Not all day. Carmen still hides her when she can, because women in her position know jobs like this do not survive scandal by accident. But children wander into revolutions if you let them. She brings her rabbit. She asks why your wheels do not have glitter. She learns that one squeeze means yes and two means no.
On the second evening she presses a silver object into your palm.
“Bad man dropped robot,” she says.
It is a flash drive.
Inside are scanned property maps, transfer drafts, care facility contracts, and a folder labeled Transition. It contains everything. The planned facility. The transport timing. The asset shifts. Personal distributions routed toward Mauricio. And an audio file.
His voice. Clear. Laughing.
“Once he’s out of the house,” he says, “the old man can disappear politely. The board will breathe easier, the staff will shut up, and nobody will know the difference in six months.”
Then the neurologist answers, “As long as he keeps presenting as flat, the court won’t push too hard.”
Dr. Salazar, listening from the doorway, says only, “Bastards.”
Friday arrives bright and merciless.
The courthouse gleams with marble and ambition. Mauricio arrives in navy, sober tie, rehearsed grief, flanked by lawyers and his neurologist. He looks exactly like the man judges trust when no one gives them reason not to.
He is smiling when they wheel you in.
The smile disappears when he realizes three things at once: you are alert, Vega is behind your chair with Dr. Salazar and two specialists, and Carmen is seated in the gallery in a cream blouse instead of a uniform, with Sofía on her lap.