“Always so dramatic, Isabel,” he said as he opened it. “What could a piece of paper possibly say that we don’t already know?” He took out the report. He read the first line.
Then the second. The color drained from his face.
“What is that?” Claudia asked, nervously placing her hand on her stomach. Hector didn’t answer. His eyes scanned the document again and again, as if the words were about to change.
“Conclusive result: irreversible infertility.” The wine glass fell to the floor.
“That’s impossible…” Hector murmured. “I have two daughters.” Isabel spoke with a calmness that cut like glass.
“You have them because I wanted them. We used a donor. You signed… without reading.” The silence was brutal.
“The diagnosis is from twelve years ago,” she continued. The same year the doctors told you that you could never have biological children.
Claudia took a step back.
“Hector… tell me that’s not true.”
Isabel looked at her for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But that child… isn’t his.”Claudia burst into tears.
“He swore to me he was fertile…” she sobbed. “He promised me a life, a name, an empire…”
Hector trembled.
“So… all this…?”
Isabel stood up slowly.
“This entire empire,” she said, “was built while you were chasing a name you could never perpetuate.”
She took another document from her bag and placed it on the table.
“While you played king, I moved every piece.
The stocks. The properties. The restaurant.
Everything is now in Sofia and Elena’s names.”
Hector tried to speak, but he couldn’t. “And you,” Isabel added, “keep the only thing that ever mattered to you: the family name.”
She turned to leave.
“Oh… and one more thing,” she said without looking at him. “The report also confirms that Claudia knew the truth.”
Claudia raised her head, terrified.
“You lied…” Héctor whispered.
Isabel stopped in the doorway.
“No,” she corrected. “You lied to yourself.”
The piano began to play again.
But it wasn’t jazz anymore.
It was the end of an empire built on ego.
