“And the police? The authorities?” I asked.
“Without clear proof, they won’t lift a finger,” he said. “And Javier has lawyers who know every loophole in California law, every technicality, every gray area. If I accuse him outright, he’ll drag me down with him. They’ll say I signed everything. That I authorized it. That I was complicit.”
My stomach tightened as I understood the bind he was in.“What does this have to do with me?” I asked, though something inside me already knew.
Ernesto stared at me directly.
“To the world, you disappeared after the divorce,” he said. “Javier and Lucía spread the story that you moved to New York, then eventually to London. Every time someone asked about you at a dinner party or a business function, they changed the narrative slightly. Eventually people stopped asking. No one knows where you are. No one expects you.”
A sharp pain hit me as I imagined them telling those stories—creating a false narrative of my “new life” while I was actually living under a freeway overpass.“I want you to return to their lives,” he said slowly, “but not as María, the ruined ex-wife. I want you to enter their house without them knowing who you are. Work for them. Listen. Watch. Get me what I can’t access from the outside.”
I let out a disbelieving laugh.
“You want me to be… what? Their maid? A household spy?” I asked, the absurdity of the proposition almost making me smile.
“Call it whatever you want,” he replied. “I can arrange it through the domestic service agency they use. A false name, a different accent, your hair changed, new papers… Two years on the street have changed you more than you realize.”My hand instinctively went to my hair—now short and dull from months without proper care, far from the carefully styled hair I’d maintained when I was still married, still part of their world.
“And in return?” I asked. “What do I get? What’s the compensation for this?”
