For a few seconds he tried to act: he frowned, feigned confusion, looked up in indignation.
—Did you check my phone?
Julian opened his briefcase and began taking out documents one by one. The company’s articles of incorporation. His father’s bank transfers. Mauricio’s ex-girlfriend’s statement. Recent photographs of Adriana entering a restaurant with him. The loan agreement. The corrected deeds. The already signed divorce petition.
Adriana’s mask fell off like broken glass.
“You don’t understand,” she said at first, her eyes moist. “Things got complicated… I did come to feel something for you.”
Julian left a photo on the table where she appeared laughing with Mauricio, taken just two weeks earlier.
—It looks very complicated, yes.
Then she changed. She dried her tears and finally showed the real face he had never wanted to see.
—You’re going to regret this. I get half of everything.
“No,” he replied. “It’s your turn to leave.”
—The scriptures!
—Corrected.
-My family…!
—In sixty days they must return every penny of the loan or they will enter into legal collection.
Adriana looked at him with a mixture of fury and panic.
—Were you pretending all this time?
Julian stood up.
—No. I was paying attention the whole time.
She left the house three days later.
Weeks later, Julián went to see Adriana’s parents. Not for revenge. For closure.
Don Ernesto opened the door with the same defeated expression he’d worn on his wedding day. His mother, Rebeca, waited for him in the kitchen, her pride shattered. Julián placed a copy of the contract on the table and spoke without raising his voice.
—I know about the company. I know about the transfers. I know they chose me because they thought a man who built everything from the ground up would be too grateful to suspect anything.
Don Ernesto wept silently.
“I wanted to warn you,” he murmured.
“Too late,” Julian replied. “But I didn’t come for that. I came so you understand something: you weren’t trying to take my money. You were trying to make a mockery of everything it took me to get here. And that can’t be forgiven with a shaky apology in a hotel room.”
He left without waiting for an answer.
The following months were tough, but clean.
The divorce went in her favor. Mauricio ended up embroiled in a civil lawsuit for fraud when other women, seeing the pattern, decided to speak out. Adriana’s family had to sell the house. And Julián, for the first time in a long time, could breathe again without feeling like someone was watching him, calculating how much they could squeeze out of him.
He took refuge in his work.
