Part 2
Alejandro reached for the phone, but Mariana stood before he could touch her.
“Don’t take another step,” she said.
Her voice came out low but so firm that Alejandro stopped.
“Mariana, please. It wasn’t what you think.”
She let out a short, dry laugh — unfamiliar even to herself.
“It wasn’t what I think? Did I imagine my cousin saying you still smell like her?”
Alejandro closed his eyes.
That gesture was worse than a confession. There was no surprise. No indignation. Only exhaustion. As if his only regret was being caught.
“It was a mistake,” he murmured. “You were so absorbed in your business. I felt alone.”
Mariana looked at him as if she were seeing a stranger wearing her husband’s face.
“And because you felt alone, you slept with my cousin?”
He ran a hand through his wet hair.
“Valeria understood me.”
That phrase struck harder than any insult.
Mariana reopened the chat and began forwarding screenshots to herself. Alejandro went pale.
“What are you doing?”
“Just keeping a record,” she replied. “Because tomorrow everyone will surely say I’m exaggerating.”
He changed then. The pleading vanished. His jaw tightened.
“You’re not going to cause a scene at your grandmother’s house.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your grandmother has high blood pressure. Your mother doesn’t deserve this. Think before you destroy the whole family over something we can discuss in private.”
Mariana watched him in silence.
That was the real trap. He wasn’t afraid of losing her. He was afraid of losing his image as the perfect husband.
She didn’t sleep that night. Alejandro stayed in the living room, sending messages from his laptop, thinking she couldn’t hear. At 2:17 a.m., Mariana’s phone rang. Her mother.
“My love,” said Doña Lucía, her voice shaking, “Valeria just sent me a very strange message. She says you’ve been unstable lately, that maybe it’s not a good idea for you to come to lunch tomorrow.”
Mariana felt something break inside her — but not from pain.
From fury.
“Mom, turn off the stove and listen carefully.”
She told her everything. Twenty minutes. The call. The messages. The hotels. The taunts.
Doña Lucía didn’t cry. She didn’t shout.
She only said:
“You’re going tomorrow. And you won’t go alone.”
At three in the morning, Mariana opened Alejandro’s email from the family laptop. She wasn’t looking for more pain. She was looking for evidence.
She found a folder labeled Quotes.
Inside were event contracts, budgets, and designs from her company. But they weren’t under Mariana’s name.
They were under Valeria’s.
Valeria had been using Mariana’s work for eight months to build her own agency.
And Alejandro had sent her every file.
Then Mariana opened one last document.
It was a proposal to decorate a wedding in San Miguel de Allende.
The bride was Valeria.
The groom was Alejandro.
The date was three months away.
And the final note read:
“After the divorce, she won’t be able to do anything. She has no way to prove the designs were hers.”
Mariana stared at the screen.
This was no longer infidelity.
It was a plan.
And at dawn, when she dressed for the family lunch, she didn’t choose black.
She chose the red dress Alejandro had always asked her not to wear because, according to him, it attracted too much attention.
This time, Mariana wanted everyone to look at her.
