Chase watches and plans

Chase observes Diego's efforts through the surveillance he installed in their new home, laughing at Diego's frustration. Yet he know that nothing was foolproof - that Diego might actually manage to reach his mother, Valeria, somehow. That's why all the the other tools he's used besides hypnosis: social reinforcement; attacking Valeria's very sense of identity and her desires and goals; physical changes to her; weakening her feelings for Diego; building both intense loyalty and romantic love in her for himself.

Chases believes that even if Diego sparks flashes of the old Valeria, it wouldn't be like a light switch suddenly turning on and banishing all the various modifications he had done:

• Thoughts of medical school, academic debates, and professional pride might resurface—but they’d arrive in English, a tongue that now feels stiff and alien on her lips. Spanish comes naturally, richly. English would feel like a tool she used once, now rusted.
• Looking at herself in the mirror—her smoother, younger face, softened curves, immigrant attire—she wouldn’t see the doctor she remembers. She would feel like an imposter pretending to be Valeria, because her body and circumstances scream Valerie.
• Clinical knowledge might flash back in fragments—diagnoses, surgeries, Latin terms—but it would seem abstract, like trivia from another life, not lived experience. “Did I do that? Or did I just dream it?”
• Even knowing Chase rewrote her, the gratitude and affection toward him remain felt, not rationalized away. Her body still warms when he praises her, her heart still races when he touches her hand. She knows it’s manipulation… but knowing doesn’t dissolve the desire. Even rebellion feels impossible, because the part of her that aches for Chase is Valerie’s core. She may know she was changed, but the love is real.
• Memories of raising Diego as Valeria might emerge—bedtime stories, lectures about his future, the pride of watching him excel. But they clash with her current instincts: to scold him in Spanish for disrespecting Señor Chase, to keep him in his place, to treat him almost like a cousin she must supervise rather than a son.
• Valeria’s return would only highlight how fully she’s become Valerie. Every element of her reality (body, home, friends, clothes, work, love) says Valerie is who you are. Valeria becomes just another memory—like remembering you once wanted to be an astronaut as a child. Real once, but meaningless now.

Ultimately, he hoped she would cling to the stability of Valerie’s life, even if she half-remembered Valeria’s. Starting over as a doctor again would feel impossible; being Valerie would feel safe. And to reconcile the paradox she faced, she might even convince herself that Valerie is the “truer” version, and Valeria was just a role she played once.

A part of Chase even relished the idea of facing a part of Valeria again. He could picture it now, telling her “Yes, I know you were Valeria, doctor… but aren’t you happier now? Aren’t you finally free of all that stress? Don’t you love me more as Valerie than you ever could as Valeria?”

So he gave Diego the freedom to see where this led.