He kissed my forehead and stepped out again, saying he was going to grab a coffee. The moment the door closed, I picked up the landline with shaking hands and dialed again.

He kissed me on the forehead and left the room again, saying he was going to get a coffee. As soon as the door closed, I grabbed the landline with trembling fingers and dialed the number again.

And at that exact moment, the door to my room opened.

Javier entered with the practiced smile of a perfect husband. He had a folder under his arm and his face was twisted into a look of sadness that didn’t fool me anymore.

Hearing the door click, María immediately went silent on the other end of the line.

I reacted by pure instinct.

“Yes, Mom,” I said into the phone, forcing my voice to sound weak. “No… I don’t know if I feel any better. I’ll call you later.”

I hung up slowly.

Javier looked at me for a second too long.

“Was that your mother?” he asked, walking toward the bed.

I nodded.

“She wanted to pray with me.”

He put the folder down on the table and adjusted my pillow with a fake gentleness that made my stomach turn.

“That’s good. It will do you good to be at peace.”

At peace.

I almost laughed.

Instead, I closed my eyes for a moment, acting as if I were exhausted. When I opened them again, Javier’s expression had already changed. There was no tenderness left. Only a sense of hurry.

“The doctor says you might start to feel more confused in a few hours,” he said. “So I brought some papers. Nothing complicated. Just in case you want to leave everything in order.”

I looked at the folder without touching it.

“What kind of papers?”

“House stuff. Accounts. Permissions. Don’t worry, I can explain it all.”

The idiot didn’t even want to wait for me to die.

He wanted to control me while I was still here.

“Not now,” I whispered. “I feel dizzy.”

I saw a small twitch of irritation in his jaw before he put his mask of kindness back on.

“As you wish, my love.”

My love.

After hearing what he said in the hallway, those words sounded like cockroaches crawling across a plate.

María answered on the first ring when I called back later.

“He’s still here,” I said, very quietly.

“I’m on my way, ma’am,” she answered. “But listen to me carefully. I did hear what he said. And that’s not the only thing.”

A cold feeling climbed up my arms.

“What do you mean?”

María took a deep breath.

“I mean that man has been trying to kill you slowly for weeks.”

For a second, the sounds of the hospital faded away. The hallway, the air conditioning, my own breathing—everything stopped.

“No,” I murmured, though deep down I already knew. “No, María…”

“The last time I cleaned the kitchen, I saw him throw away your good pills and replace them with a different bottle that looked exactly the same. I also saw him put a few dark drops into the tea he made for you at night. I thought it was just a vitamin or something from the doctor… until I heard him talking on the phone with a woman. He said it wouldn’t be long now. That your liver ‘was finally doing what it should.’”

I felt a wave of nausea so strong I had to cover my mouth.

The nights.

The metallic taste in my mouth.

The tiredness that got worse exactly when Javier began to “take care” of me personally.

The way he insisted on making my tea himself.

Everything began to fall into place in a terrifying way.

“Ma’am, listen to me even if I’m not there,” María said in the firm voice of a woman who is honest to the core. “If you break down right now, he wins. So no. You are not going to break.”

I swallowed hard.

“What do we do?”

There was a short silence. No doubt, just calculation.

“First, do not sign anything. Second, I need to get into the house before he returns. Third… you need to find a doctor who isn’t afraid of him.”

I closed my eyes.

The hospital doctor had spoken carefully, but there was something strange in his eyes. It wasn’t a lie. It was more like resignation, as if he were looking at test results that didn’t quite match the person sitting in front of him.

“There’s a doctor,” I whispered. “Andrea Montalvo. She is a liver specialist. She was a student with my cousin. Once, she asked me to get a second opinion from her, but Javier said it wasn’t necessary.”

“Well, we need her now,” María interrupted. “Call her.”

I didn’t have my cell phone.

But I knew her number by heart because my cousin had repeated it to me so many times that I had memorized it.

I dialed with shaky hands.

A young, sharp voice answered.

“Dr. Montalvo?”

“This is Lucía Serrano. We met at a dinner at Adriana’s house… I need help. Now. And I don’t want my husband to find out.”

I don’t know what she heard in my voice, but she didn’t ask any pointless questions. She only said:

“Give me your room and hospital. I’m close by.”

When I hung up, María spoke again.

“I’m almost at the house. Where are the important things?”

I looked at the door, as if Javier might walk through it at any moment.

“In the office. The bottom drawer of the left bookcase. There is a blue folder with the house deeds, a USB drive, and a cream-colored envelope with my old will.”

“Old will?”

“Yes. Two years ago I signed one, leaving almost everything to Javier if we didn’t have children.”

“And now?”

I felt my heart pounding in my chest.

“Right now, I don’t plan to leave him anything at all.”

María let out a sound that was almost a laugh.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

The next hour was the longest of my life.

Javier came and went twice. Once to bring me juice that I didn’t touch. Another time to push the papers on me again. I pretended to be asleep, confused, and weak. Every time he stroked my hand, I had to fight the urge to pull away. At one point, he stood by the window, sending messages on my phone. He had a tiny smile on his face.

I watched him through my eyelashes, memorizing every move as if it were evidence.

At a quarter past six, there was a knock on the door. A woman in a white coat walked in. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her eyes were so clear they almost made me cry.

“I’m Dr. Andrea Montalvo. I’ve come to review Mrs. Serrano’s case for a second opinion.”

Javier stood up immediately.

“We didn’t ask for one.”

Andrea didn’t even look at him.

“The patient asked for it. And as long as she can speak for herself, that is enough for me.”

For the first time since I heard him whispering in the hallway, I saw Javier lose his cool.

Andrea examined me in silence. She read my charts. She asked very specific questions: when the health decline started, who was giving me my medicine, if I had felt sudden sleepiness or nausea after certain drinks, and if things changed once someone else took control of my pills.

I answered everything.

Javier tried to jump in twice.

“Excuse me,” Andrea snapped the second time, “if you answer for her again, I will have you removed.”

He stormed out, saying he was going to call the hospital director. Andrea waited for the door to close and then turned her tablet toward me.

“Your liver is in bad shape,” she said quietly, “but not bad enough to say you only have ‘two days’ without a fight. There are spikes in these results that don’t make sense. I want to redo the tests and run a toxicology report. Has someone been giving you something extra?”

I stared at her.

“Yes.”

She held my gaze for a second and realized I wasn’t hallucinating.

“Good,” she said. “From now on, do not eat or drink anything unless I bring it or a nurse I trust brings it. And I need a sample of everything he’s been giving you at home.”

“María is going to get it.”

Andrea frowned slightly.

“María?”

“The woman who is going to save me.”

She didn’t smile, but she nodded.

“Then move fast.”

At ten past seven, María sent me a note through a nurse Andrea had recruited. It was a folded piece of paper hidden inside a bag of gauze.

“I have the folder. I also found a jar with no label hidden behind the flour. And there’s more: a life insurance policy signed three weeks ago. The only beneficiary is Javier. It’s for a very large amount of money.”

The words danced in front of my eyes.

Three weeks ago.

Right when he started insisting that I stop seeing certain doctors because “they stressed me out.”

I folded the paper with freezing fingers.

When Javier returned, he brought coffee and a nervous look that he couldn’t quite hide with his fake smile.

“Who the hell is Dr. Montalvo and why is she ordering new tests?”

“Because I want to live,” I said.

His face hardened for a moment. Just a moment. Then he became the grieving husband again.

“Don’t talk nonsense. We all want that.”

All of us.

The word made me laugh on the inside.

“Javier,” I murmured, pretending to be tired, “if I really have so little time left… I want you to sleep here with me tonight.”

He blinked, surprised.

He expected me to fight him, not ask him to stay.

“Of course,” he said at last. “Of course.”

“And tomorrow… I will sign whatever you need me to sign.”

I saw the light in his eyes. Just a flash. But it was there. It was the purest greed I had ever seen on a human face.

He leaned over and kissed my hand.

“I knew you’d do the right thing.”

The right thing.

My God.

I didn’t sleep that night. I only pretended to.

Andrea came in at midnight with a new nurse and secretly handed me another note under the blanket.

“Preliminary toxicology is positive for small doses of liver toxins. I can’t give a final diagnosis yet, but I can confirm that someone has been poisoning you.”

I had to grit my teeth so Javier, who was dozing in the chair, wouldn’t hear me crying.

I wasn’t crying because I was afraid of dying.

I was crying because of how disgusting it was to have opened my home, my body, and my trust to a man who had planned my death like a business investment.

At three in the morning, he woke up suddenly and touched my forehead.

“Are you still here?” he whispered, thinking I was asleep.

I didn’t answer.

His hand moved slowly down to my neck—not like someone giving a caress, but like someone checking for a pulse.

I breathed as softly as I could.

After a few seconds, he went back to the chair.

I knew then that he wasn’t just waiting for me to die anymore.

He was thinking about helping it happen.

At six o’clock, as the sky was just starting to brighten behind the blinds, María walked in. She was dressed as usual in her simple uniform with her hair tied back. Her eyes looked tired, but her face showed something new.

Determination.

She was with a thin man in a dark suit carrying a leather briefcase.

“Ma’am,” he said, approaching my bed without even looking at Javier. “I’ve brought the notary who worked for your father. The only one who doesn’t owe your husband any favors.”

Javier stood up suddenly.

“What is the meaning of this?”

For the first time since I’d known her, María looked at him without looking away.

“It means the lady is going to put her affairs in order. And you are going to stay quiet.”

Javier laughed, sounding like he couldn’t believe it.

“And who do you think you are?”

The notary opened his briefcase calmly.

“Someone who knows how to read a property deed,” he said. “And someone who knows how to recognize when a sick patient is being forced into something. If you want to stay here, you will stay silent and keep your distance.”

I had never seen Javier back down before. That morning, he did.

It wasn’t out of respect.

It was calculation again.

He still believed that, somehow, he had won.

I signed the new will with a shaky but firm hand. I took away his power of attorney. I canceled his access to my bank accounts. I transferred the house to a trust for a charity my mother had always supported. I set up a payment for María for the rest of her life. I set aside money for my cousin’s children. And I added one specific rule: if my death was investigated as a possible poisoning, no one involved could touch a single cent until a judge made a final decision.

Javier turned pale with every page.

“Lucía, this is crazy,” he said finally, losing his nice tone. “You’re confused. You’re drugged. They are manipulating you.”

Andrea walked in right then.

“No,” she answered, putting some test results on the table. “She was being manipulated before. Now she is finally informed.”

Javier looked at the papers. Then at me. Then at María.

And for the first time, he understood that he no longer controlled the room.

His voice dropped lower.

“What did that woman say to you?”

María didn’t wait for me to answer.

She took the unlabeled bottle from her apron and put it down right in front of him.

“She told us about this.”

The color drained from his face completely.

The room went silent.

Even the heart monitor seemed to beat louder.

Javier took a step back.

Then another.

“You don’t know what you’re looking at.”

Andrea crossed her arms.

“We know enough to call toxicology, the police, and the medical board if we have to.”

I looked at him from the bed. I was still weak, but I wasn’t broken anymore.

“I heard you in the hallway,” I said.

Those words hit him hard. I saw it. It was as if a wall inside him had collapsed.

His face changed. Not into regret—never that. It changed into pure, open hatred.

“Then you should have died last night,” he whispered.

María cursed under her breath. Andrea took a step forward. The notary closed his briefcase with a loud click.

And I, who had spent the last thirty-six hours terrified that I was attending my own funeral, felt something fierce and cold rise up inside me.

“No,” I answered. “The one who’s getting buried today is you.”

Javier looked toward the door, trying to figure out an exit, a story, a lie. He wasn’t defeated yet. Just cornered.

And just as a nurse appeared at the door to say that the police were on their way to talk to me, María leaned over my bed. She whispered something with a calmness that made my skin crawl.

“Ma’am… the house is taken care of. But there’s one more thing you need to know before he tries to run.”

She discreetly held up my cell phone—the same one Javier had taken from me—and showed me the screen.

There was a chat open with a contact named “Vero ❤️.”

The last message, sent by Javier at 3:12 in the morning, said:

“If she signs tomorrow, we’ll be free by tonight. If she doesn’t sign… we’ll just have to get rid of the old woman early.”