PART 2
The room erupted in shouts.
Valeria knelt beside Rodrigo, slapped his cheek, and began to sob uncontrollably, as if she wanted everyone to see her suffering.
“Help him! Please, someone help him!”
Three guests rushed to his side. One was a doctor from Hospital Ángeles, another a nurse, and the third, a friend of Andrés’s, worked in the emergency room. They checked Rodrigo’s pulse while someone called an ambulance.
Mariana remained standing, her white dress sagging to the floor, the bouquet dangling from her fingers.
Andrés stood before her.
“Mariana, look at me. What do you know?”
She swallowed.
For years she had said “nothing.”
Nothing when Rodrigo sold some of her grandmother’s jewelry and blamed her.
Nothing when he forged her signature on a loan.
Nothing when he convinced his parents that Mariana was unstable because she refused to give up her shares in the family business.
But that night, saying nothing could have destroyed her.
“She put something in my drink,” he said.
Andrés’s face changed.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t make a scene. He just turned cold.
“Did someone record it?”
Mariana glanced toward the corner of the room.
“Maybe the videographer.”
Andrés turned immediately.
“Leo! Don’t delete anything. Not even a second.”
Leo Martínez, the videographer, slowly lowered the camera.
“I haven’t deleted anything.”
Don Ernesto approached Mariana, his face red with fury.
“What did you do to your brother?”
Mariana let out a dry laugh.
There it was.
Rodrigo collapsed after threatening her, and yet she was the one being accused.
Andrés stepped forward.
“Don’t speak to my wife like that.”
“This is a family matter,” Ernesto said.
“No,” Andrés replied. “This is an attempt to drug a bride at her own wedding.”
Silence fell like a stone.
Doña Alicia clutched her chest.
“How dare you say that?”
Mariana pointed at the table.
“My glass was there. Rodrigo put something in it. I moved it away from me. If he drank from it, it’s because he thought I’d still be the same fool I’ve always been.”
Valeria stopped crying for a second.
Just one.
But Mariana noticed.
The ambulance arrived through the side entrance. The paramedics lifted Rodrigo onto a stretcher. He was conscious, though disoriented, with red eyes and slurred speech.
As they passed him near Mariana, he turned his head.
“You ruined everything,” he whispered.
Mariana leaned forward slightly.
“No. I just stopped helping you hide it.”
Rodrigo closed his eyes.
He didn’t seem sorry.
He seemed exposed.
Then a police officer, named Gabriela Rivas, entered. Leo carefully raised the camera.
“I have the video,” she said.
Valeria paled.
Don Ernesto clenched his fists.
And Mariana understood something worse: the glass wasn’t the end of the plan.
It was just the beginning.
Minutes later, in a private room at the hotel, Officer Gabriela reviewed the video. On the screen, Rodrigo appeared approaching the table, smiling, touching Mariana’s shoulder while his other hand moved over the glass.
The small white bag was clearly visible.
Andrés let out a breath through his nose.
The officer paused the image.
“Mrs. Mariana, you switched the glasses after you saw him.”
“I moved my glass away from me,” she replied. “I didn’t know what it was. I just knew he’d put something in there.”
Gabriela nodded.
“That matters.”
Then the hotel security officer arrived with another recording: Rodrigo entering the men’s restroom 10 minutes before the toast. Outside, Valeria was waiting for him. She opened her purse, took out something small, and handed it to him.
Valeria started crying when they questioned her.
“They were mints,” she kept repeating. “They were just mints.”
But mints don’t leave a man lying on the dance floor.
At 3:17 a.m., the officer returned with news.
Rodrigo was stable.
He had ingested a strong sedative mixed with alcohol.
Then Andrés asked the question everyone was avoiding:
“Why did you want to sedate Mariana at your wedding?”
Mariana closed her eyes.
Because she already knew the answer.
Money.
And the worst part was that Rodrigo hadn’t acted alone.
