“That’s all.

One chance.” Griselda looked down at him, and something in her face was colder than anger.

It was calculation.

Chapter 9 — What She Could Not Allow

“I need to make sure,” she said, half to herself, “that you can never claim what’s yours.”

Santiago did not understand the words then.

He would understand them later.

Griselda went into her room and made a telephone call, her voice low, and took from a drawer a set of papers she had prepared in advance — a diagnosis with a doctor’s signature that no honest doctor had earned, and an authorization form with a blank waiting for another.