He glanced down at his phone—not because he expected a message, but because it gave his hands something to hold. That’s when he heard the voice.
“Excuse me, young man,” a woman said from behind his left shoulder. “I’m going to ask you something very strange, and I need you to say yes before I explain why.”
Marco turned slowly.
She appeared to be in her late sixties, maybe early seventies. Her silver hair was styled elegantly in an updo, and she wore a long-sleeved black lace dress with a simple pearl necklace. But what caught Marco’s attention wasn’t her appearance—it was her eyes: warm, steady, carrying the kind of calm that only comes from surviving too much to fear everything.
“I don’t have much time,” she continued with quiet urgency. “My name is Elena, and I need you to pretend for twenty minutes that you are my daughter’s fiancé.”
Marco blinked.
“Sorry?”
“My daughter’s name is Valeria. She’s about to walk through that door. I’ll explain everything later, but right now I need to make sure a woman doesn’t walk alone into a room where some miserable man plans to humiliate her.”
Marco stared at her in silence.
In another life—in the version of himself before that Tuesday and the note on the kitchen counter—he might have dismissed the idea with an awkward smile. He would have made a polite excuse and slipped away to hide in the bathroom.
But something in Elena’s face stopped him.
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