Part 1
Rain lashed against the windows of the luxury penthouse in central Madrid, but the real hurricane was happening inside the living room. Camila, six months pregnant, backed away trembling toward the white leather sofa, protecting her belly with both hands. In front of her, Damián, her husband and heir to a hotel empire, had a face disfigured by rage and alcohol.
“You embarrassed me in front of the investors!” Damián shouted, throwing his whiskey glass against the wall. “I told you to stay quiet, to just smile! But no, you had to give your opinion. Do you think because you carry my son you have the right to talk about my business?”
“Damián, please, you’re drunk,” Camila pleaded, her voice cracking. “I only said the deal seemed risky. I did it for us, for our future.”
“You know nothing about my future!” he bellowed, closing the distance between them in two strides.
The first blow was a slap that echoed sharply in the room, causing Camila to lose her balance. She fell onto the sofa, screaming, but Damián didn’t stop. Blinded by narcissistic fury, he grabbed her by the arm and threw her to the floor. Camila tried to crawl away, begging for her baby’s life, but Damián delivered a brutal kick to her side, right in the ribs, followed by another that impacted dangerously close to her bulging belly.
“Let’s see if you learn your place now!” he spat before storming out of the apartment, leaving her lying on the carpet, moaning in pain as a dark stain began to spread down her legs.
Camila lost consciousness between the sharp pain and absolute terror. She woke up hours later under the white, sterile lights of a hospital. The rhythmic beeping of machines was the only sound. A doctor with a somber expression stood beside her, checking the IV.
“My… my baby?” Camila whispered, her throat dry.
The doctor looked down, unable to meet her eyes. “I am so sorry, ma’am. The placental abruption was massive due to the trauma. We did everything we could, but the fetus did not survive. We had to induce labor to save your life.”
The scream that came from Camila’s throat wasn’t human; it was the sound of a soul breaking into a thousand pieces. She cried until she had no air left, hugging herself, feeling the unbearable emptiness in her womb.
At that moment, the room door opened. Damián entered, looking fresh, wearing a new suit and holding a bouquet of flowers, acting the part of the concerned husband. “Honey, they told me what happened. You fell in the shower, right? How clumsy of you… Poor son of ours.”
Camila looked at him with horror. He was rewriting history, threatening her with his gaze to follow his script. But before she could respond, a deep voice loaded with lethal authority resonated from the entrance.
“She didn’t fall in the shower, Damián. And you are not walking out of this room a free man.”
In the doorway stood Don Horacio, Camila’s father. A man who had started as a bricklayer and built a construction empire with his own hands. He didn’t wear Italian suits like Damián, but his presence filled the room with primal fear. His eyes were red from mourning his grandson, but now, they were dry and fixed on the killer of his blood.
Damián smiled arrogantly, believing his money protected him from everything, but he didn’t know Don Horacio had brought something more than words to the hospital. What dark secret from Damián’s past does Horacio hold to destroy him before the police arrive?
Part 2
The air in the hospital room grew thick, almost unbreathable. Damián let out a short, dismissive laugh, placing the bouquet on the nightstand with insulting calm. He turned to his father-in-law, adjusting the gold cufflinks on his shirt.
“Don Horacio,” Damián said in a condescending tone. “I understand you’re upset. It’s a tragedy, of course. But don’t come here making false accusations. Camila is clumsy; the pregnancy had her unbalanced. It was a domestic accident. Besides, what are you going to do? Call your worker friends to yell at me? My legal team costs more than you invoice in a year.”
Horacio didn’t move. He didn’t shout. He simply closed the room door gently and walked to the foot of the bed, looking first at his daughter with infinite tenderness, and then at Damián with the coldness of an executioner.
“You are a stupid boy playing at being a man,” Horacio said, his voice low and controlled. “You think money is power. But money is volatile. True power is information and loyalty. And you have neither.”
“Get out of here before I call security,” Damián threatened, pulling out his state-of-the-art mobile phone.
“Go ahead, call,” Horacio replied, crossing his arms. “But first, you should know why your phone has no signal. And why your credit cards were declined at the lobby florist, although the cashier was kind enough to let you take the flowers up out of pity.”
Damián frowned and looked at his mobile screen. “No Service.” He tried to unlock it, but the device seemed dead. A drop of cold sweat ran down his back.
“What have you done?” Damián asked, losing his composure.
Horacio pulled a thick manila envelope from his worn leather jacket. He threw it onto the bed, at Camila’s feet. “While my daughter was in surgery fighting for her life and losing my grandson, I wasn’t crying in a corner. I was making calls. Three years ago, Damián, your father put you in charge of the hotel expansion on the Costa del Sol. Remember the building permits that ‘miraculously’ got approved on protected land?”
Damián went pale. “That’s legal. Everything is in order.”
“No, it isn’t,” Horacio continued. “You bribed councilmen, falsified environmental reports, and laundered money through shell companies. Companies that, curiously, subcontracted my firm for the foundations. You thought I was an ignorant old man who just laid bricks. But I keep every paper, every invoice, every email. I have the recordings of your meetings with the local mafia to ‘speed up’ the works.”
Damián stepped back, hitting the wall. “That… that would destroy my family. My father would kill me.”
“Your father already knows,” Horacio sentenced. “I sent him a copy of everything an hour ago. He just issued a press release distancing you from the company and the inheritance to save the group’s stocks. You are disinherited, Damián. You are ruined.”
Camila watched the scene, stunned, forgetting her physical pain for a second. Her father, the quiet man who always smelled of cement and coffee, had just dismantled her tormentor’s life in one afternoon.
“But that isn’t justice for what you did to my daughter,” Horacio said, taking a step toward Damián, who was now trembling visibly. “That is just to strip you of your shield. Now you are a common citizen, with no money, no expensive lawyers, no daddy to save you.”
“It was an accident… she provoked me…” Damián stammered, looking at Camila with desperation. “Camila, tell him it was an accident. Please! They’re going to put me in jail!”
Horacio stepped between Damián and Camila. “Don’t speak to her. Don’t look at her. And about jail… oh, Damián. Jail would be a gift. I’ve spoken to the coroner. He has documented every bruise, every fracture, and the exact cause of the fetus’s death. It is reckless homicide and aggravated gender violence. But there is something else.”
Horacio pulled a small digital recorder from his pocket. “Remember the ‘smart’ security system you installed in the penthouse to control Camila? The one that records audio and video to the cloud? You were the admin, but you forgot I paid for the installation as a wedding gift. I have master access. I have the video, Damián. I have the video of you beating her, throwing her to the ground, and kicking my grandson to death.”
Damián fell to his knees. The weight of reality crushed him. There was no escape. It wasn’t a domestic accident; it was a murder recorded in high definition.
“The police are in the hallway,” Horacio said, opening the door. “I didn’t want them to enter earlier because I wanted to see your face when you realized you are nobody anymore.”
Two police officers entered, followed by a detective. They handcuffed Damián, who cried like a child, his arrogance dissolved into a puddle of pathos. As they dragged him out of the room, Damián screamed Camila’s name, but she turned her head toward the window, unable to look at the monster she had loved.
Horacio sat on the edge of the bed and took his daughter’s hand. His rough hands, full of calluses from years of hard work, wrapped around Camila’s fine, trembling hands. “It’s over, my girl. Money couldn’t buy him out this time. Now we are going to heal.”
But the legal nightmare was just beginning, and Horacio knew Damián would try to play dirty even from prison.
Part 3
Six months passed since that fateful afternoon at the hospital, but for Camila, time was measured in small steps of recovery. She was living back in her parents’ modest house, far from the cold luxury of the penthouse where she had lost everything. The room she had prepared for her baby was now empty in her mind, though full of boxes in reality.
The trial against Damián became the media event of the year. Even from pretrial detention, Damián tried to manipulate the narrative. Using the little money he had hidden away, he hired an unscrupulous lawyer who tried to paint Camila as a hysterical and mentally unstable woman who had self-inflicted the wounds. It was a cruel strategy that forced Camila to relive the trauma on the stand, answering humiliating questions about her mental health and her marriage.
However, Don Horacio had left no loose ends.
On the day of the verdict, the courtroom was packed. Camila, dressed in strict black, sat next to her father. Her hands were clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. Damián entered, thinner and paler, with the lost look of someone devoured by the system he once thought he mastered.
The prosecutor presented the final piece of evidence: the security video. The room fell into a sepulchral silence as the images were projected. There was no audio on the big screen out of respect for the jury, but the visual violence was undeniable. The slap, the shove, and most damningly, the deliberate kick to the belly were seen. The jurors, men and women alike, looked away in repulsion. Damián lowered his head, defeated. There was no context that could justify such brutality.
The judge, a severe man who had reviewed the financial corruption evidence provided by Horacio in a separate case, read the sentence with a steady voice.
“Damián Velázquez, this court finds you guilty on all charges: aggravated assault, domestic violence, and the involuntary manslaughter of the unborn child. Furthermore, federal charges for fraud and money laundering are added. You are sentenced to a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison with no possibility of parole for the first 15 years.”
The bang of the gavel sounded like celestial music to Camila. Damián screamed, cursing Horacio and Camila as the bailiffs forcibly removed him from the room. This time, no one felt pity for the fallen millionaire. His own father was not present in the room; he had cut all ties to protect the company’s reputation.
Outside the courthouse, a crowd of journalists waited. Horacio, shielding his daughter with his robust body, stopped briefly before the microphones.
“Justice is not a rich man’s game,” Horacio said in a gravelly voice. “My daughter lost what she loved most, and that has no price. But today we have proven that no one is above the law, and that a father will do whatever is necessary, legally, to protect his own. Let this serve as a lesson to any coward who thinks he can raise a hand against a woman and hide behind a checkbook.”
Weeks later, Camila visited the cemetery. It was a sunny autumn morning. She knelt in front of a small white marble tombstone that read: “Angel, loved and never forgotten”. She placed a teddy bear and fresh flowers.
“You can rest in peace now, my love,” she whispered, caressing the cold stone. “Mommy is okay. Grandpa took care of us.”
Horacio waited a few meters away, respecting her grief. When Camila stood up, she wiped her tears and walked toward him. She was no longer the trembling victim from the hospital. There was a new strength in her eyes, a resilience forged in the fire of pain.
“Are you ready to go?” Horacio asked.
“Yes, Dad. I’m ready to start over,” Camila replied.
Damián ended up in a maximum-security prison, where his last name and former luxuries were worthless. There, he learned the hardest lesson of all: in the real world, respect cannot be bought, and cruelty always has a price paid with one’s own life. Camila, for her part, used her experience to found a support organization for pregnant women victims of violence, ensuring that no other woman would have to face a monster alone. Her father’s justice not only punished the guilty but gave her the platform to save others.
Do you think 25 years in prison is enough to pay for the life of an unborn baby? Share your opinion below!
