Part 4 — I wanted to fire the children’s nanny, but when I returned home I saw something that made Renata’s smile disappear at once

Renata’s phone slipped from her hand and bounced twice on the marble floor.

It did not ring a third time.

Miguel immediately called the bank.

“Freeze all the accounts,” he said. “No, not only the company’s. The children’s trust too. Now.”

Renata turned toward him.

“You cannot do this. Alvaro is my fiancé.”

“That is exactly why I am doing it,” Miguel replied. “Before you forge any more documents.”

He put down the phone and looked at me.

“Alvaro, you have to choose. Should the police come in now, or should we take the children to the clinic first?”

“The children to the clinic,” I said immediately.

Daniela picked up Emiliano. The little boy rested his head on her shoulder and quietly exhaled. I picked up Nicolás. His skin was warm, but it was no longer burning me as it had a few minutes earlier.

Renata blocked my way at the door.

“Alvaro, think. If you call the police, you will lose everything before Sofia’s family. They will take your children away.”

For the first time, her threat no longer frightened me.

“You were already trying to take them away.”

“I was protecting your family.”

“No. You were protecting your own plan.”

She held out her hand.

“Give me the phone.”

“Why?”

“Because that recording was obtained illegally.”

Miguel chuckled calmly.

“The recording is only the beginning. The children’s analyses, the bank transfers, the forged signatures, and the camera recordings are already secured.”

Renata stepped back.

At that moment two police officers entered the house. Behind them stood employees of a private clinic. One of the officers demanded Renata’s bag.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “Alvaro, tell them that this is a misunderstanding.”

I looked at Nicolás. He was still holding the little wooden bird.

“For a very long time I told myself that everything was a misunderstanding,” I said. “But my children’s breathing is not a misunderstanding.”

Renata fell silent.

At the clinic, the doctors took both children into separate rooms. A white lamp flickered on the wall, the sharp smell of disinfectant burned my nose, and I walked back and forth in the hallway.

Two hours later Dr. Lucía came out.

“They are no longer in danger,” she said. “But they will need observation for several more days.”

My knees gave way.

Daniela was sitting on a chair, clasping her hands together.

“You saved them,” I told her.

“I only did what you should have done that night. I entered the children’s room.”

“Did Renata see you?”

“No. But the next day she told me that if I stood in her way, I would never find money for my father’s operation.”

I lowered my head.

“Why didn’t you leave?”

Daniela looked at the wooden bird.

“Because that morning Emiliano called me for the first time. In his own words. And I realized that I could not leave them alone.”

That evening the police found correspondence with her employee Martín on Renata’s phone. He was the very man whose voice we had heard in the recording. He had taken the watch from my office and put it in Daniela’s bag. Then the two of them began transferring money from the bank.

The next day Miguel and I went to the police station. Renata was sitting in the interrogation room. A voice recorder lay on the table in front of her.

Miguel turned on the recording.

“If they continue crying, two more drops,” Renata’s voice was heard.

Silence descended over the room.

Renata raised her head.

“I did not say it like that.”

Miguel rewound the recording and played it again.

“It is your voice,” he said. “Your own words.”

Renata covered her ears with her hands.

“I was not killing them. I only wanted them to sleep.”

I was sitting opposite her, and for the first time I heard what her justification sounded like in another person’s voice.

“You were not putting the children to sleep,” I told her. “You were using them against me.”

She looked at me.

“I loved you.”

“Maybe. But you loved your own desire more than our family.”

That day a case was opened against Renata for attempted poisoning of the children, fraud, document forgery, and embezzlement. Martín was also arrested. The court left temporary custody of the children with me, while the bank returned the money missing from their accounts.

Several weeks later, Renata’s lawyer withdrew from the case.

“My client is still trying to deny all the evidence,” he told me. “But she no longer believes even her own lies.”

I did not meet this with joy.

Simply, for the first time I no longer had to save someone from the consequences of her own choice.

When I returned home, the children’s room was empty. The beds had been taken to the clinic, and a little sock lay on the floor. Sofia’s photograph stood on the windowsill. I had placed the wooden bird beside it.

The bird no longer tinkled.

The mechanism was broken.

I picked it up and took out the small recorder hidden inside. This very object had saved my children, but when I saw it I felt not only fear. I thought about how many times I had walked past it and noticed nothing.

Three weeks later the children returned home.

Daniela continued working with us, but now she was not a nanny, but a member of the family. I paid the money needed for her father’s operation. She refused the gift, so we formalized the money as an official loan.

“I will feel more at peace this way,” she told me.

“Me too,” I replied.

Every morning before going to work, I fed the children. Sometimes milk spilled on the table. Sometimes Nicolás tore my papers. Once Emiliano tied me to an entire meeting with a shoelace.

Earlier I would have called this lost time.

Now I called it my life.

The wedding did not take place. I canceled the contract, removed Renata’s name from the company’s management, and reduced my working hours. The hotel I had been going to buy that day was bought by someone else.

For the first time in my life, this loss did not hurt me.

Four months later, on a December morning, the first snow came. The children stood by the window and drew circles on the glass with their fingers.

“Dad, it is white outside!” Nicolás shouted.

“It is snow,” I told him.

Emiliano handed me the wooden bird.

“Sing.”

The mechanism was still broken. But I replaced a small screw and carefully turned the key.

The bird tinkled once, very faintly.

The children surrounded me, laughing.

That evening I received a message on my phone. It was from Renata.

“I still know that everything between us is not over. The children need a mother. Talk to me.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote only one sentence:

“The children need a mother, but they need truth and peace even more.”

I deleted the message and put the phone on the table.

Daniela was making tea in the kitchen. The smell of orange peel and hot cinnamon filled the room. Nicolás was drawing with pencils on the floor, while Emiliano was sleeping on my knee.

The wooden bird stood on the windowsill.

This time I set its sound off myself.

And no one in the house was afraid anymore.