After the Operation, I Found Out That My Father Had Sold My Apartment, but My Mother’s Smile Immediately Disappeared at the Mention of the Notary

I woke up nine hours after the operation and found sixty-eight missed calls on my phone. At first I could not understand why my hand was trembling. My throat burned from the breathing tube, my back was tightly bandaged, and fire ran down my left leg with every movement.

The nurse handed me the blue plastic cup standing beside the bed.

“Drink slowly, Mariana. Do not get up yet.”

The phone lit up again. It was a voice message from my father.

“My child, do not worry. We sold your apartment. We used the power of attorney you gave us. We needed the money for Fernanda’s wedding. I will explain later.”

I listened to it three times.

The apartment was in Providencia. For seven years I had saved money to buy it, worked on Saturdays too, taken additional projects, and often spent less than I could have. Its value was approximately seven million six hundred thousand pesos.

My sister was getting married in three weeks.

I called my father.

“Tell me you are joking.”

“Mariana, you have just come out of a serious operation. Do not start.”

My mother took over the phone.

“Fernanda is getting married only once. You have a good job. Later you will buy another apartment.”

“How did you sell my apartment, which is only in my name?”

I heard laughter in the background. It was Fernanda.

“It is already sold, Mariana. Now think about recovering.”

At that moment I understood that this had not been a decision made in panic. They had been preparing it for a long time.

Six weeks earlier, doctors had told me that surgery was necessary because of severe compression of the nerves in my spine. My parents immediately helped me. My mother received my mail, my father handled the insurance, and Fernanda came one Saturday with food and asked me for a copy of my identity card.

“Mother needs it for the hospital papers,” she told me.

I suspected nothing.

I really had given my father a special power of attorney, but only for insurance, hospitalization, and several administrative matters. The document clearly stated: the right to dispose of property was not transferred.

“Which notary did you formalize the sale with?” I asked.

Silence fell.

“Father.”

“It is already finished, Mariana.”

“Which notary?”

My mother sighed.

“At the Forty-Second Notary Office. Carla helped us. Do not speak to us as if we were criminals.”

Carla was my cousin and had worked with real-estate documents for years.

“Which power of attorney did you present?”

“The one you signed,” my father replied.

“There is no right to sell in that power of attorney.”

This time the silence was heavier.

Fernanda chuckled.

“You find a problem in everything. The buyer has already received the keys, and we have the money too.”

“We?”

“You know what I mean.”

They did not know that for twelve years I had headed the real-estate fraud prevention department. I checked fake powers of attorney, altered signatures, and sham transactions with banks, developers, and notaries.

My father inhaled into the phone.

“Rest. In a few months you will thank me that you no longer have to take care of this apartment.”

I ended the call.

The nurse looked at the monitor.

“Your blood pressure has risen.”

“I am better now.”

I called my lawyer, Julian Rios. He listened to everything and asked me for the notary office, the date of the transaction, and the real-estate registration number.

He called me twenty minutes later.

“Mariana, the power of attorney used in the sale says that your father had full authority to dispose of the property.”

“That is impossible.”

“I know. I am looking at your real document here, on my desk.”

I clenched my fingers in the blanket.

“What did they do?”

“I do not know exactly yet. But the date of the altered copy is almost six weeks before the operation.”

That same week Fernanda asked me for a copy of my identity card.

“Julian…”

“I am listening.”

“Do not tell anyone yet that we are checking.”

“And what if they are already waiting for your response?”

Rain began at the window. And for the first time I felt that I was lying not in a bed, but in a trap laid in advance.

Julian said quietly:

“Mariana, another document has appeared in this case. As soon as you see it, you will have to decide whether you will risk going against your family…”

Julian confirmed the next morning: the notary where I had formalized the power of attorney had never issued a document with the right to sell property. Two pages had been replaced in the copy used, and the stamp had been distorted.

The transaction had not yet been completed in the registry. This was our only time.

The buyers, Ricardo and Elena, turned out to be a retired married couple. They had paid with all their savings.

“They are not my enemies,” I told Julian. “Their money must also be returned.”

The trail of the money led to my father: two million one hundred thousand pesos had been transferred to wedding suppliers, four million two hundred eighty thousand had appeared in Fernanda’s account. The rest had been used for my father’s debts, cards, and a travel advance.

My father called me seventeen times.

“They stopped the wedding payments!” he shouted at me.

“Because of the investigation.”

“Withdraw the complaint.”

“No.”

Then Fernanda took the phone.

“Why should you destroy my wedding?”

“You did this yourself when you touched my apartment.”

My mother wrote on social media as if I had voluntarily gifted part of the apartment to my sister. Julian saved everything.

Soon the wedding organizer gave testimony. One sentence came from her email: “Let us settle everything after the fourteenth. By then my sister will be incapacitated for several days.”

My operation was on the fourteenth.

Then they found the electronic trace of the file. The altered power of attorney had been created on Fernanda’s work computer, and traces of editing remained under Carla’s account.

That same evening my parents came to the hospital. My father was holding a folder.

“Sign, and everything will be over,” he told me.

I looked at the pen.

“Julian, can you come in?”

The door opened. But Julian was holding more than just a folder. He had evidence whose existence my family did not yet know about…

Julian entered the room and calmly closed the door. The pen froze in my father’s hand. My mother hugged the bouquet of flowers more tightly, while Fernanda narrowed her eyes.

“Before you ask Mariana to sign once again,” Julian said, “everyone must see when the document with which you sold the apartment was created.”

He placed the computer on the table and turned on the screen. The document’s creation date appeared. It was thirty-eight days before the operation.

My father immediately fired back:

“This proves nothing. The file could have been rewritten later.”

“Then explain this,” Julian answered.

The file’s technical trace appeared on the screen. The document had been created on Fernanda’s office computer. Then two pages had been altered from Carla’s account. We opened another window: my real power of attorney contained no right to dispose of property.

My mother said quietly:

“It is probably a mistake.”

“Four million two hundred eighty thousand pesos do not get transferred to Fernanda’s account by mistake,” I said.

The color drained from Fernanda’s face.

“Father arranged everything.”

A silence fell in the room so complete that I heard the clicking of the oxygen machine beside the bed.

My father looked at her.

“Be quiet.”

“Why? I am telling the truth! You told me that Mariana would not be able to do anything for several days. Carla changed the documents. I only received the money.”

My mother grabbed the chair.

“Fernanda!”

Julian played a second recording. It was a voice message from Fernanda.

“If you have so much money in investments, why are you making such a big fuss about the apartment? We chose to sell it because withdrawing your money would have taken more time.”

Fernanda’s face changed. She heard her own voice and, for the first time, could say nothing.

“That was a private conversation,” she whispered.

“Now it is evidence,” Julian replied.

My father moved closer to my bed.

“Mariana, we are family. Everything will be returned to you.”

“The buyers’ money?”

He looked away.

“We will arrange it.”

“The sale of my apartment?”

“You will sign yourself that you voluntarily gave it to me.”

“I will never again sign anything that you bring me.”

Julian opened the folder.

“The complaint has already been filed. We have also begun the procedure to cancel the transaction, and a prohibition will be placed on the property.”

Fernanda pulled the chair so hard that the metal scraped against the floor.

“If the wedding is canceled, I will blame you for my whole life!”

“It was your wedding,” I said. “Not my apartment.”

At that moment Julian’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and his face changed.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“The notary’s secretary. She says that besides the money received from the buyers, another transfer appeared in the transaction. That money did not enter your father’s account.”

“Where did it go?”

Julian ended the call and leaned toward me.

“The money went to Carla’s account. But that is not the worst news. Along with this transfer, there is also a video recording in which all four of you can be seen…”