My husband left me for his former lover and stabbed me twice, but his strange visitor at the hospital lost color

My husband left me on the kitchen floor, while his beloved woman calmly smiled as she stepped over my blood.

“If you touch Valeria one more time, I swear, I will kill you!”

Those were Alejandro’s last words before the knife entered my abdomen for the first time. After the second blow, I crashed onto the marble floor and instinctively grabbed my stomach with both hands. At that moment I still did not know that two lives were fighting there.

We had been married for three years. I was Mariana Salgado, twenty-eight years old, a financier who had left her job at her husband’s insistence after the wedding. Alejandro Cardenas was the head of one of Monterrey’s most influential business groups and said that I no longer needed to work.

At first it looked like care.

Then I understood that with these words he had simply locked me in a room. I no longer had colleagues, my own money, or daily work that drowned my thoughts in noise. That is why in recent months I had constantly worn a small silver bracelet on my wrist. My mother had given it to me before the wedding. Two round, bronze-colored bells hung from it and rang barely audibly with every movement.

That day, at five o’clock in August, I was preparing a cold hibiscus drink in the kitchen when Valeria opened the door. She had a superficial scratch on her arm and was crying as if someone had been chasing her all the way.

“Mariana pushed me,” she whispered. “She told me that I should die.”

The knife was in Alejandro’s hand for cutting an apple. He suddenly stood up.

“That is a lie,” I said.

“You did not leave the house today?” he asked me.

“Not a single step. Alejandro, listen to me.”

Valeria covered her arm with her hand.

“I do not want you to fight because of me.”

Her voice was full of tears, but her eyes were dry. I saw that. Alejandro did not see it, or did not want to.

“Did you touch her?” he asked.

“No.”

“I asked you whether you touched her!”

The little bell on the bracelet rang when I stepped back. I still hear that sound, like a warning that I understood far too late.

The first blow knocked the air out of me in a second. The second cut my legs out from under me. The bloodstain spread across my white shirt so quickly, as if someone had spilled red ink from inside.

I looked at Alejandro and waited for him to become frightened. But he went to Valeria, took off his jacket, and draped it over her shoulders.

“Calm down, you are safe now,” he told her.

Valeria looked toward me and smiled.

Then the maid rushed in screaming. Someone called an ambulance. Alejandro repeated my name, but it was already too late. I was bringing my hand to my stomach when my vision went dark.

Three days later I woke up in the intensive care unit of San José Hospital. I had tubes connected to me, my body was wrapped in bandages, and my throat was dry. The doctor told me that if they had brought me five minutes later, I would not have survived.

In the evening Alejandro came with white roses.

“Mariana, I…”

The doctor came to my bed, holding an ultrasound picture, and looked at Alejandro.

“I need to speak with your wife urgently,” he said. “And you need to listen too.”

Alejandro’s face changed. The doctor opened the folder, and his hand moved toward the first page…

The doctor opened the folder completely, and such silence fell in the room that I could hear every click of the monitor.

“Mariana is pregnant,” he said.

The bouquet of roses fell from Alejandro’s hand. White petals scattered across the floor.

I closed my eyes. I still could not understand whether I had heard correctly.

“How far along?” Alejandro asked.

“Approximately ten weeks. But that is not all. There appear to be two fetuses.”

His face lost its color.

“Twins?” he barely pronounced.

The doctor nodded.

“Both are alive. Your wife’s survival saved their lives as well.”

Something moved inside my heart. Two little lives. Two reasons why I still had no right to surrender to death.

Alejandro sat down beside the bed.

“Mariana, I swear, I did not know.”

His voice was trembling, but in his eyes I saw not only fear for the children. There was something else there too. Fear that now he could no longer call my death a simple accident.

“Tell Valeria,” I said in a hoarse voice. “Tell her that there are children.”

He did not answer me immediately.

That silence turned out to be heavier for me than an answer.

At two o’clock in the morning a security employee came. He was holding my things: my wallet, phone, and silver bracelet, whose two little bells were stained with blood.

“They found this at the hospital entrance,” he told me. “The camera shows a woman bending over before you and picking it up from the ground.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Her face is not clearly visible. But the woman is wearing white high-heeled shoes.”

Valeria had been wearing exactly such shoes that day.

Alejandro immediately stood up.

“That proves nothing.”

“I was not asking you,” I said.

The security employee handed me the phone. The hospital entrance was silently visible on the screen: I was being taken in on a stretcher, while Valeria stood several steps behind. Before the door closed, she looked toward the camera and put the bracelet into her bag.

My stomach clenched.

“Why did she take it?” I asked.

Alejandro snatched the phone from me.

“Stop accusing her. She was panicking.”

“A person in panic does not hide an object in her pocket.”

For the first time in three years, I said aloud what I had always thought.

In the morning my old friend and lawyer, Lika Mchedlishvili, came. She closed the door, drew the curtains, and placed a small recorder beside the bed.

“Alejandro will tell you that everything is under control,” she told me. “But you must no longer believe him.”

“What do you know?”

Lika took a folded paper out of her bag.

“Your old financial account. From the company where you worked before the wedding. In the last six months, three large transfers were made from Alejandro’s group in the name of a woman connected to Valeria’s father.”

My breath caught.

“Is this theft?”

“Possibly. But yesterday I found something else too. An audio recording saved in your home security system. You installed the camera in the kitchen yourself, remember?”

I remembered. Two weeks earlier, when Alejandro had told me that my suspicions were imagination.

Lika turned on the phone.

First Valeria’s crying was heard. Then my voice. Then Alejandro’s shouting.

But one more phrase had been recorded, which Valeria said quietly several seconds before the knife.

Lika placed her hand on the screen button.

“Listen. This time pay attention to her words…”

Lika’s finger pressed the button, and Valeria’s quiet voice sounded in the room.

“Do not kill her yet. First make her sign.”

Then Alejandro’s voice came, low and irritated.

“If she finds out, everything will collapse.”

“She will not find out,” Valeria answered. “Mariana still trusts your word.”

The recording continued. Valeria was barely holding back laughter.

“Today she only has to be frightened. If she resists you, hold the knife so that a mark remains. Then we will all say that she attacked us.”

The monitor clicked sharply. Alejandro struck the wall with his fist.

“Turn this off!” he shouted.

Lika pulled the phone back.

“This has already been handed over to the police.”

“You do not know what you are doing,” Alejandro said.

“No, Alejandro. Now for the first time I know exactly what you were doing.”

Valeria was sitting in the armchair. For several seconds she remained completely motionless. Then she covered her eyes with her hands.

“That is taken out of context,” she said.

“Which part?” I asked. “The part where you discussed killing me, or the part where you said you needed my signature?”

Valeria raised her head.

“You understand nothing.”

“Then explain it to me.”

She looked at Alejandro. For the first time I saw not love between them, but fear.

Lika unfolded a second document.

“Before the marriage Mariana signed a prenuptial agreement. It says that in the event of her death, the heirs to the assets will be her children, while custody of the children will temporarily be transferred to an independent administrator. But if Mariana gives up her share by signing a divorce, Alejandro’s control will remain entirely intact.”

I understood why Alejandro had wanted my signature that day. Several days earlier he had brought me the document and told me that it was only a technical redistribution of property.

Valeria needed me dead if they could not obtain the signature.

“Did you know about the children?” I asked Alejandro.

His lips opened, but no sound came out.

Valeria answered.

“We knew that you had been to the doctor. We found the test in your bag while searching it.”

My blood ran cold.

“You searched through my bag?”

“I was doing everything for Alejandro.”

“No,” he said suddenly. “I knew nothing about the children.”

“But you told her not to kill me before I signed,” I said. “That means you valued my life at less than a document.”

Police officers entered the room. One handcuffed Alejandro, while the other opened Valeria’s bag. Inside they found my bracelet, hidden in a small pocket.

Valeria lost color for the first time.

“I took this by accident,” she said.

“Was the recording also made by accident?” Lika asked.

My hands were trembling. The children were still alive. They took Alejandro away, but before they led him through the door, he looked back.

“Mariana, I loved you.”

I could not understand whether that was a confession or the last lie.

That same night, when I thought everything was over, a message arrived on my phone from an unknown number.

“If you think Alejandro was the only one making plans in that house, call your mother in the morning. She knows who drew up the real contract…”