Chapter 6 - The Unraveling in Willow Glen
Teresa Santos froze, the small black hard drive pressed flat between her trembling palms.
The air in the master bedroom felt heavy and suffocating. Outside, the morning breeze rustled the palms lining Crestview Drive, but inside, the only sound was the harsh, ragged breathing of the man standing in the doorway.
"Hector..." Teresa whispered, her voice barely audible. "You... you were posted bail?"
"Give me the drive, Teresa," Hector repeated, taking two slow, deliberate steps across the Persian rug. He held out his right hand, his fingers twitching with frantic impatience. "You don't know what you're holding. You don't understand what Valeria has done to us."
Teresa looked down at the sleek black casing. She looked at the white masking tape, at the clear, neat handwriting she had corrected when Valeria was ten years old.
MOM, PLEASE READ THIS.
"Why was this in my grandmother's box, Hector?" Teresa asked, her eyes slowly rising to meet her husband's. "Why did Valeria hide this inside my room?"
"Because she's sick!" Hector snapped, his voice booming off the vaulted ceiling. He lunged forward, grabbing Teresa by her upper arms and pulling her violently toward him. "She’s tried to ruin this family! She bribed police, she fabricated records, she’s been trying to blackmail me for six months!"
"She's in the hospital!" Teresa screamed, her composure finally breaking. She tried to pull away, but his grip was like iron. "She has broken ribs! A skull fracture! They said someone beat her with an iron bar in our garage!"
"She lied!" Hector roared, shoving Teresa backward. She stumbled, her hip crashing against the heavy mahogany vanity table, knocking perfume bottles and silver brushes to the floor in a shattering cascade. "She staged the whole thing to frame me!"
Teresa hit the floor, pain shooting through her side. But as she fell, her hand instinctively tucked the hard drive deep into the pocket of her dark silk dressing gown.
Hector stood over her, his chest heaving, his eyes wide and bloodshot. He didn't offer a hand. He didn't ask if she was hurt. He looked at the empty velvet lining of the antique silver box on the vanity, then down at her pocket.
"You're going to hand it over," Hector said softly, a deadly quiet falling over his voice. "Or you're going to realize very quickly that I don't have time to play games with you today, Teresa."
Before he could reach down, the loud, wailing screech of police sirens echoed down Crestview Drive.
Red and blue emergency lights flashed through the sheer white curtains of the bedroom windows, painting the walls in erratic, frantic bursts of color. Tires squealed on the gravel driveway outside, followed by the heavy, metallic clatter of doors slamming shut.
Hector stiffened. He darted to the window, pulling back the curtain just far enough to see three San Jose Police cruisers blocking his Mercedes.
"Dammit!" he hissed, turning back toward his wife.
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Teresa scrambled backward on her hands and knees toward the bathroom door, her hands clutching her pocket like a shield.
Hector glared at her one last time—a look of pure, unadulterated venom—before turning on his heel and sprinting down the rear service hallway toward the back staircase.
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