have gone to my grave believing my husband was a decent man. But that night, in the eerie stillness of our enormous home, I heard his voice.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll make sure she dies. The house, the money in the bank… once I’m rid of her, it will all be yours.”
The one saying that was my husband.
My name is Elena. I was thirty-two years old and worked as an accountant for a small company in the city. My husband, Javier, was three years older and owned his own business. It wasn’t wildly successful, but it did well enough. We had been married for five years and lived with his parents in a sprawling house on the outskirts of town, complete with a wide garden, a swimming pool, and a garage for two cars. From the outside, anyone would have thought I was living a dream. I had married into money and status.
My father-in-law, Agustín, was a stern, quiet man whose few words always carried weight. My mother-in-law, Carmen, was tiny but sharp-tongued, and in five years of marriage, there was one subject she never stopped pressing: children. We didn’t have any.
She often said things like:
