PART 1
My mother-in-law accused me of betraying her son simply because I was expecting another girl—and that same night, she nearly sent me to the hospital while I was still carrying my baby.
My name is Isabela Cortés. I’m 27, and for years I believed my marriage to Alejandro Aranda was solid. We married in Querétaro in 2017 with a modest celebration—mariachi music, white flowers, and his mother, Doña Mercedes, crying as if she were giving away royalty. As we were leaving for our hotel, she held my hands and whispered:
“Now it’s time to give us the next Alejandro Aranda IV.”
I laughed nervously, thinking it was just an old-fashioned remark. I had no idea it would become an expectation that haunted me.
In Alejandro’s family, they prided themselves on a strange “tradition”—for over a century, only boys had been born. They spoke of it like a blessing, a mark of their lineage. So when I got pregnant during our honeymoon and we found out it was a girl, everyone was stunned. Alejandro needed time to process it, but when Lucía was born, something in him changed. He held her and cried in a way I had never seen.
“I didn’t know I could love this much,” he told me.
And for a while, it was true. He adored her. But his mother never accepted her the same way. Whenever Alejandro wasn’t around, she would drop cutting remarks.
“That doesn’t look like an Aranda nose.”
“Girls don’t happen in this family.”
“God sends signs for a reason.”
I stayed quiet, telling myself she was just bitter and old. I thought ignoring her would keep the peace. That was my mistake—thinking silence could shrink poison.
