Chapter 8 - THE THING HE STOLE
I did not meet Diego alone.
He hated that.
“This is between husband and wife,” he said.
“You stopped treating it that way.”
He placed a manila envelope on the table.
Inside was my father’s old brass key.
I recognized it immediately. It opened the metal box I had kept in our bedroom closet before moving the papers to the bank.
“Where did you get this?”
Diego rubbed his jaw. “I found it.”
“You searched my things.”
“I was trying to understand our future.”
“Our future needed my father’s death certificate?”
He flinched.
Nadia leaned forward. “Mr. Vargas, did you submit documents to a lender using my client’s identity?”
“I’m not talking to you.”
“Then talk to me,” I said.
“Elena, my family is drowning.”
“That is not an answer.”
“My uncle’s business failed. Mom guaranteed debt. Mateo has loans. If we don’t refinance, they lose everything.”
“So you married me and decided I was the refinance?”
“No.”
“Then why create Vargas Family Holdings eleven days before our wedding?”
He looked away.
That was his answer.
I stood.
Diego grabbed the envelope. “Wait.”
Something thin slid out and fell to the floor.
Nadia picked it up.
It was a photocopy of our prenup.
Several paragraphs were highlighted.
Beside one clause, somebody had written in blue ink:
INVALIDATE THROUGH MARITAL MISCONDUCT / VIOLENCE?
I read it twice.
Then I looked at Diego’s injured neck.
The room turned cold.
Nadia’s face hardened.
May you like
“Elena,” she said, “I think they expected a fight.”
And for the first time, I wondered whether that dinner had been designed to provoke one.
