You lift a hand.
“It’s all right.”
You turn toward the child.
“Yes. I am still blind.”
She considers this.
“But you’re not dark anymore.”
No one speaks.
You feel the sentence enter every corner of the room.
Not dark anymore.
You reach for her small hand.
“No,” you say. “I suppose I’m not.”
Rebeca’s trial takes two years.
Rodrigo pleads first and testifies.
He cries on the stand.
He says he loved you.
He says things got out of control.
He says Rebeca made decisions.
Rebeca’s lawyer says Rodrigo is a coward blaming his mother.
Both are true.
That is the difficult thing about betrayal.
Truth rarely arrives clean.
When Rebeca testifies, she wears black.
Cold jasmine still follows her.
She says she sacrificed her life to care for a difficult, broken brother.
She says you became unstable after Abril appeared.
She says Mariela manipulated you.
Then the prosecutor plays the recording from your study.
Rodrigo’s voice fills the courtroom.
If he keeps asking questions, everything we built collapses.
Then Rebeca’s email appears on the screen.
Keep him isolated until the incapacity petition is approved.
For the first time, your sister’s silence sounds like fear.
You testify the next day.
Salvador guides you to the stand.
You do not need him to, but you allow it because old friends deserve gestures.
The prosecutor asks what changed.
You could answer with legal details.
The audit.
The proxies.
The trust.
The fraudulent invoices.
Instead, you say, “A child sat at my table and did not speak to me like I was already dead.”
The courtroom goes silent.
You continue.
“After my accident, people called my loneliness peace. They called my dependence care. They called my silence stability. I believed them because grief is very convincing when everyone around you benefits from it.”
You turn your face toward where you know Rebeca sits.
“My sister did not steal my sight. But she tried to steal what remained of my life.”
Rebeca makes a small sound.
You do not stop.
“And the worst part is that she almost succeeded because I let shame do half the work.”
The trial ends with convictions on several financial and coercive-control-related charges, though not every charge sticks.
Justice is never as complete as pain wants it to be.
Rodrigo serves time under a reduced arrangement because of cooperation.
Rebeca receives a harsher sentence than she expected and less than you privately wanted.
When she is led away, she says your name once.
“Esteban.”
You turn your head.
She whispers, “I was afraid of losing you.”
You answer, “So you kept me where I couldn’t leave
