Chapter 3 - The Confrontation at the Marina
By Friday afternoon, the legal storm had fully broken over Beatriz.
Her freezing bank accounts, cancelled credit cards, and locked hotel suite had forced her out of hiding. According to my private investigator, she had spent the morning frantically calling her high-society friends and family members, only to find that word of her cruelty toward Isabella and her financial crimes had spread through the Costa del Sol elite like wildfire.
Nobody was willing to lend money to a woman facing federal embezzlement and child abuse charges.
I received a call at 3:00 p.m. while I was sitting on the back patio with Isabella, helping her build a Lego castle.
It was Beatriz, calling from a public payphone near the Puerto Banús marina. Her voice, usually dripping with haughty confidence, was shrill, desperate, and cracking with hysteria.
“Mateo! You monster!” she screamed over the line as seagulls cried in the background. “The police came to the hotel! They’re threatening to arrest me! My cards are declined, my accounts are empty, and my friends won't even answer my calls! How could you do this to your wife?”
“You are not my wife, Beatriz,” I said calmly, keeping one eye on Isabella, who was carefully snapping a red brick onto her tower. “You are a criminal who abused my child and stole from my company.”
“I was stressed! I made mistakes!” she sobbed, the performance turning pathetic. “Please, Mateo! Drop the charges! Let’s settle this quietly! If you ruin me publicly, I’ll tell the press that you drove me to it! I’ll tell them you were an abusive, absentee husband who abandoned us in Marbella!”
I let out a cold, humorless laugh.
“Go ahead, Beatriz. Tell the press whatever you want. But before you do, remember that I have the audio recording of you bragging about turning our eight-year-old daughter into a maid while you sat on the terrace drinking gin. I have the bank audits showing your embezzlement. And by Monday morning, I will have testimony from every staff member you terrorized.”
“Mateo, please! I have nowhere to go! I have no money!”
“Then I suggest,” I said, looking out over the sparkling Mediterranean sea where my yachts bobbed gently in the distance, “you figure out how the real world works. Because for the first time in your life, you are going to have to support yourself.”
I hung up the phone and blocked the number permanently.
Isabella looked up from her Lego castle, her dark eyes wide and questioning. “Was that... was that her?”
I put my phone away, smiled, and knelt beside the table, gently touching her bandaged hand.
“Yes, sweetheart,” I said softly. “She called to say goodbye. She is never coming back here.”
Isabella looked down at the table for a long moment. Then, a tiny, tentative smile spread across her face—the first real, unburdened smile I had seen on her in three years.
“Can we... can we get ice cream?” she asked shyly. “Vanilla with chocolate sprinkles?”
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“We can get as much ice cream as you want,” I said, scooping her up into my arms and spinning her around as she giggled with pure, unadulterated joy. “We can eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if we feel like it.”
For the rest of the afternoon, the villa echoed with laughter instead of quiet terror.
