The Red-Marked Belt At Sofía's Birthday Exposed What Diego Had Chosen To Hide

I set the grocery bags beside the bedroom dresser because I still had not let go of them. One had tipped against my leg, and a carton inside pressed a cold, damp square through the paper. The ordinary weight of groceries felt wrong beside the leather belt on the bed.

Sofía sat near the pillows, holding her marked arm against her purple dress. I had photographed the injury in the bathroom light, then wrapped the belt in a clean towel without wiping it. Now she watched me move around the room as if every drawer I opened might let Teresa in.

I locked the bedroom door again and checked it with both hands.

Leaving had seemed simple when I first brought Sofía upstairs: take the suitcase from the closet, pack enough clothes for several days, gather her documents, and use the household account until I could decide what came next. I pulled the suitcase onto the floor, but before opening it, I reached for my phone.

The banking app took longer than usual to load. I stood with my back against the dresser, listening to the faint sounds beyond the door while the screen remained white. When the account finally appeared, I thought I had selected the wrong one.

The available balance was less than a quarter of what I expected.

I refreshed the page. The same number returned.

Sofía shifted on the bed, making one of the purple balloons near the headboard scrape softly against the wall. I looked at her arm again. The red mark had not faded. Money could complicate leaving, but it could not turn staying into the safer choice.

I opened the transaction history and worked backward. The grocery purchase had not posted yet. Neither had the birthday cake. Even after accounting for both, the balance made no sense. I kept a running total of our regular expenses because I was usually the one who noticed when something was due. There should have been enough for transportation, several nights away, and the next round of household bills.

I checked the previous month. Then the month before that.

Several transfers had left the account in amounts small enough to blend into ordinary spending. They were not identical, but the spacing repeated: shortly after deposits, then again before bills were due. The newest transfer had cleared that morning, before Sofía’s birthday gathering began.

I enlarged the entry. The description was abbreviated, offering only a transfer reference and the final digits of another account. Diego’s login activity appeared in the account details near the same time. That did not tell me where the money had gone, but it told me I had not spent it and had not forgotten it.

I checked my budgeting notes anyway.

The small notebook was in the nightstand beneath old receipts and charging cables. I compared each expected deposit with every payment I had written down. I used the calculator twice. Then I opened the statements saved in my email and repeated the process from the beginning.

The shortage remained.

It was not one mistaken purchase or a bill I had overlooked. It was a pattern, and the pattern had been kept just below the level that would have forced my attention. In recent weeks, the transfers had grown larger. The one from that morning was the largest yet.

My first impulse was to walk downstairs with the phone in my hand. I pictured Teresa in the living room beneath the purple balloons, Mateo still holding Sofía’s doll, and Diego refusing to look at me after he entered. The belt on the bed stopped me.

Confronting him before I understood what he had done would warn him that I was checking.

I connected my phone to the charger and began taking screenshots. I captured the balance, the transfer references, the dates, and the login history. Then I downloaded every statement the app allowed and sent copies to an email account Diego did not use. The files moved slowly. I watched each progress circle close before starting the next.

Sofía climbed down from the bed and stood against my side. I rested one hand on her hair while continuing with the other. She stayed silent, her attention fixed on the towel wrapped around the belt.

The suitcase remained empty on the floor.

I searched the dresser for the paper folder where we kept household records. The folder was there, but it felt thinner than I remembered. Recent statements were missing. So were several pages I knew I had filed after checking the previous month’s bills.

I photographed what remained and slid the folder beneath Sofía’s clothes in the open suitcase. Then I added the notebook, her documents, and the towel-wrapped belt. Packing was no longer only about getting us through the door. I had to leave with enough proof that Diego could not erase the path behind us.

A floorboard sounded in the hallway.