Enough to understand that the trips were never just trips.
That the absences weren’t work.
That the excuses weren’t spontaneous.
They were a system.
A parallel life… repeated more than once.
At that moment, Ricardo walked in.
He held a folder, his expression no longer surprised… but defeated.
“I think you need to see this,” he said.
The documents spilled across the table one by one.
Loans under both marriages.
Duplicate insurance policies.
Signatures I recognized… and others I didn’t remember giving.
Valeria found hers too.
We looked at each other.
And we understood something worse than infidelity.
He hadn’t just lied to us.
He had used us.
Legally.
Financially.
As if our lives were interchangeable pieces in something he controlled.
Gabriela told me about a lawyer.
I called Laura Hernández that same afternoon.
Valeria agreed to come with me.
There was no argument.
No pride.
At that point, none of that mattered anymore.
At the office, Laura was direct.
Valeria’s marriage was null.
Mine was still valid… on paper.
All the children would have rights.
So would the debts.
Nothing we had lived through would disappear.
It would simply be reorganized… in the fairest way possible.
That night, I returned to the hospital.
Alejandro’s condition worsened.
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