You didn’t confront her.
That was the strangest part.
You should have. A better husband might have. A more honest man definitely would have. But the second the message landed in your chest, instinct took over and it was not the instinct of a husband. It was the instinct of a builder, a strategist, a man who had spent decades surviving by never stepping into a fight without knowing where the exits were.
So instead of demanding answers, you made a plan.
The plan was ridiculous.
Fernando knew that. You knew that. Even now, sitting in this cab with rain sliding down the windshield and a paper cup of terrible coffee turning cold in the holder, part of you still knows this is absurd. Pablo Rivas, hotel magnate, board chairman, magazine-profiled “visionary businessman,” hiding in a taxi like a jealous fool from a melodrama. If one reporter saw you like this, the city would chew the story for a month.
But shame is a strange kind of fuel. It will power almost anything if the humiliation burns clean enough.
At 2:57 p.m., you see her.
Catarina steps out beneath the shopping center canopy, one hand holding her handbag close to her body while the other lifts the hem of her cream trousers away from the puddles. Even in the rain, she moves beautifully. That is one of the private cruelties of love. People do not become ugly just because they may have betrayed you. Sometimes they stay devastatingly themselves, and that makes everything worse.
She glances down the curb.
