THE UNFINISHED VOWS

I stared at the shattered screen of Mateo’s phone, the corrupted audio file mocking me with its silence.

The hospital room felt suffocatingly small.

Sofía’s hand was gripping my arm so tightly her fingernails dug into my skin. We both looked at the small black earpiece resting in my palm.

"If Mateo didn't put this under his pillow," Sofía whispered, her voice trembling, "who did?"

"Someone who wanted to know if he could still hear," I said.

My mind raced back to the moment Mateo’s heart monitor had spiked. Someone had been listening to us. Someone had stood in this very room, during our makeshift wedding, and slipped that device beneath his head to monitor his breathing, his murmurs, or maybe just to make sure he was truly unconscious.

I turned the earpiece over.

There was a tiny, faded silver serial number on the inside curve. But there was something else. A microscopic drop of dried red wax near the speaker mesh.

My breath caught in my throat.

Red wax.

"Sofía, look at this." I pointed to the tiny crimson speck.

She leaned in, her eyes widening. "Is that… from a seal?"

It was.

For the last three months, Mateo and his uncle Álvaro had been fighting over the estate of Mateo’s late father. All the official documents from the Montenegro family lawyer, David Vargas, were sealed with a distinctive red wax stamp. It was an old-fashioned tradition the firm refused to abandon.

"David was here," I breathed out.

"The lawyer?" Sofía shook her head, confused. "David wasn't at the wedding. He told me he had to fly to Barcelona for an emergency deposition. He sent flowers."

"Then why does this earpiece have wax from his office on it?"

I didn't wait for an answer. I picked up Mateo’s cracked phone again and went into the Bluetooth settings. My hands were shaking so violently I dropped the device onto the hospital blanket. I snatched it back up.

I scrolled to the list of previously paired devices.

There, at the very bottom, disconnected but remembered by the phone’s history, was a device named: DV-Secure-Comm.

David Vargas.

The family lawyer. The man who had drafted Mateo’s father’s will. The man who knew exactly what Mateo was set to inherit the moment we said "I do."

"Lucía," Sofía said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "If David is involved, he has access to everything. The bank accounts, the trust, the estate. He could be the one who ordered the brakes cut."

"Answer me one thing," I said, looking up at her. "Did David have access to Álvaro’s bank accounts too?"

Sofía froze. "Yes. He manages all the family’s offshore transfers."

That was the missing piece. Mateo’s corrupted voice recording had mentioned a money transfer from an account. He hadn't suspected his uncle Álvaro. He had suspected the lawyer who was framing him.

"We need to go to the police," Sofía said, reaching for her purse.

"No." I grabbed her wrist. "The note said not to trust those closest to us. If David is behind this, he knows the local police. We need proof. Real proof."

I walked over to the small closet in the corner of the hospital room. When they had brought Mateo in, the paramedics had bagged his belongings. I pulled out the heavy plastic evidence bag. Inside was the charcoal wool coat Mateo had been wearing when the car crashed.

It was stained with dirt and dried blood.

My chest ached just looking at it, but I unzipped the bag and reached my hands into the pockets.

Empty.

I checked the inside breast pocket.

My fingers brushed against something stiff. I pulled it out.

It was a valet parking ticket from a luxury hotel downtown. The date printed on it was yesterday. The exact time was 2:00 PM.

"That's impossible," I said aloud.

"What is it?" Sofía asked.

"Mateo was with me at two o'clock yesterday," I said, staring at the little piece of cardboard. "We were at the florist. He didn't go to any hotel."

I turned the ticket over. Written on the back, in messy, hurried handwriting, was a room number: Room 412.

But the handwriting wasn't David the lawyer's.

And it wasn't Mateo’s.

It belonged to Álvaro.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I had just convinced myself Álvaro was innocent. But here was his handwriting, tucked inside my fiancé's bloody coat.

Before I could say a word, the heavy wooden door to the hospital room slowly clicked open.

A tall figure stepped into the dim light.

It was Álvaro.

His face was bruised, his expensive suit torn at the shoulder, and his knuckles were bleeding. He looked at me, then at the valet ticket in my hand.