“Say one more filthy thing about her,” Mauricio whispered, “and I’ll forget we were ever brothers.”
The lawyer cleared her throat, tapping a silver pen against the documents. “Mr. Salgado, you have two choices. Sign the temporary agreement now, leave the marital home tonight, and settle this privately. Or refuse, and by tomorrow morning, we file the preliminary injunction. Your personal and business accounts will be frozen while a judge reviews how marital assets were squandered on an affair during a life-or-death medical emergency.”
My eyes snapped back to Irma. Frozen accounts. Public exposure.
I grabbed the pen. My hand shook uncontrollably as I dragged the ink across the pages. Every signature felt like a layer of skin being peeled from my bones. I signed away my access, my home, my leverage.
I threw the pen down and stormed out of the room, my cheek throbbing, convinced I could still outsmart them. I was Marcial Salgado. I still had my house. I still had my corporate throne. I thought the worst was over.
I didn’t know that my execution had just begun.
I walked out of the hospital into a morning that felt cruelly normal. People were buying coffee. Cars were honking. A woman laughed into her phone near the entrance. For one absurd, violent second, I hated the world for continuing its mundane spin while mine was collapsing.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Valeria. Of course I did. I didn’t call my attorney yet. I didn’t call the bank. I called the woman I had destroyed my life for.
The phone rang six times and went to voicemail. I called again. Nothing. I sent a text: Emergency. Call me. The message turned blue. Read. No reply.
A sharp prick of anxiety hit my ribs, but I refused to call it fear. Fear was for men who had lost control.
I got into a taxi and gave the driver the address of my estate in San Pedro. When the taxi turned onto my pristine, tree-lined street, I sat up straight. There were two cars parked in front of my massive wrought-iron gate. One was Mauricio’s SUV. The other was a battered white van belonging to a locksmith.
I stepped out of the taxi before it even fully stopped. “What the hell is this?” I shouted.
The locksmith looked startled, dropping his drill. Mauricio did not flinch. He stood by the gate with a manila folder under one arm, his face carved from stone. Beside him was Doña Teresa, our elderly neighbor—the woman who had found Irma collapsed on the kitchen floor. She was holding a plastic bag of groceries, and when she saw me, her mouth tightened with profound, unfiltered disgust.
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