The Woman Who Cheated on Me with My Brother Came Back

For ten years I told myself I had forgotten her. I repeated it so many times I almost came to believe it: on planes, in meetings, in the beds of women whose names I don't remember. I built a company from scratch, made more money than I knew how to spend, and learned to look at people as if they were pieces on a board. All so I wouldn't think about Helena.

And then Esteban died.

Esteban Mora was the closest thing I had to a father when mine disappeared and my mother fell ill. He pulled me off the street, paid for my education, taught me to negotiate without my voice trembling. He was also Helena's father, which made me, for a while, the luckiest man in the world. Until I stopped being one.

The lawyer summoned me for the reading of the will. I didn't want to go. The mere idea of going back to that house, of breathing the same air as her, churned my stomach. But I owed the old man that much, so I put on the most expensive suit I owned and drove to the estate by the lake where I had been happy at twenty-three.

She was in the living room when I walked in.

Ten years had taken nothing from her. On the contrary. The girl I had fallen in love with had become a woman of slow gestures and tired eyes, more beautiful than she had any right to be. She was wearing a black mourning dress that clung to her hips, and when she looked up and recognized me, I saw her breath catch.

—Adrián —she said, as if my name weighed on her mouth.

—Mrs. Mora —I replied.

The blow landed true. She was not “Mrs. Mora”; she was my brother's wife. Helena had married Mateo barely a year after leaving me, in a ceremony I, of course, had not been invited to.

Mateo wasn't there that afternoon. Better for him. I still remember the last time I saw him, the night I walked unannounced into the apartment he shared with Helena and found them in bed. My brother. My fiancée. The sheets I had paid for. I didn't yell. I didn't break anything. I simply closed the door and disappeared from their lives for a decade. Sometimes the worst punishment is silence.

The will was long and dull until the final clause arrived. Esteban, the cunning old man, had left control of his company tied to one condition: that I return to the management, side by side with the family that had destroyed me. It was his way of forcing all of us to sit at the same table. From his grave, he was still moving the pieces.

—I need to think about it —was the only thing I said before leaving.

***

She showed up at my house three nights later.

I live in a glass house on a hill, far from everything, precisely so no one will bother me. When the doorbell rang at eleven at night, I knew it was her before I checked the camera. I knew it in my body, in that part of me that never learned how to forget her.

I opened the door. She had her hair loose and a coat over something I couldn't make out. Her eyes were red.

—I know it's late —she began—. But if I waited until morning, I wouldn't dare.

I let her in without saying a word. I made her wait in the study while I poured myself a whisky and offered her nothing. Small cruelties. For ten years I'd fantasized about having her like this, uncomfortable, dependent on me.

—I'm here to ask you to accept what's in the will —she said—. The company means everything to my mother, to Mateo, to…

—To Mateo —I repeated. —Of course. It always comes down to what Mateo needs.

—I didn't come to talk about him.

—No? —I took a step closer—. Because as far as I know, you're still sleeping in his bed. The same one where I found out what your word was worth.

She lowered her gaze. She was expecting me to make her cry, to make her defend herself, to say any of the things I had spent years rehearsing in response. Instead she took off her coat and let it fall over the back of a chair.

Underneath, she was wearing almost nothing. A dark lace set I knew well, because it was the same kind of thing she wore when we were young and she still belonged to me.

—I didn't come to ask your forgiveness —she said, and her voice trembled only slightly—. I know you wouldn't give it to me. I came because for ten years I haven't been able to stop thinking about you, and because this may be the last time you let me get close. Punish me however you want. But don't ask me to leave.

***

I should have thrown her out. The sensible, decent thing would have been to open the door and watch her go down the hill. Instead I set my glass on the table, crossed the distance between us, and grabbed her chin with more force than necessary.

—Is this what you do? —I said, very close to her mouth—. Do you crawl into a man's bed to get what your family wants? First my brother, now me.

—No —she whispered—. I've wanted you since before all of that existed.

I kissed her to silence her, and it was like opening a door that had been locked for ten years. There was nothing sweet in that kiss. I bit her, yanked her hair back, let her feel all the resentment built up in every movement of my mouth. And she answered with the same desperation, clutching my shirt as if she feared I would shove her away at any second.

I shoved her against the glass wall. Outside, the city lights shimmered in the distance; anyone with a good telescope could have seen us, and at that moment I didn't care. I slipped the lace straps off her shoulders with two fingers and bit her shoulder while she threw her head back against the cold glass.

—Adrián —she panted, and my name in her mouth no longer weighed on me: it lit me up.

I pulled the lace away from her chest and lowered my mouth. I remembered the taste of her skin better than that of any woman I'd touched afterward. She threaded her fingers through my hair, pressing me into her, and I licked and bit until her knees buckled and she had to hold on to my shoulders.

—Ten years imagining this —I told her in her ear—. Do you know how many times?

—Me too —she answered—. Every night. Beside him.

That confession, which should have disgusted me, lit me like gasoline. Knowing she was thinking about me while sleeping with my brother was the most perfect revenge fate could offer me. I picked her up and carried her to the long sofa in front of the picture window.

I laid her on her back and stripped off the little she still had on, slowly, watching her, letting her feel exposed. Her breathing was ragged and her body arched toward me, asking without words. I parted her legs with my knee and slid my hand between her thighs. She was soaked.

—Look at you —I murmured—. So wet for the man you left behind.

—Shut up —she begged, but she lifted her hips, seeking my fingers.

I touched her unhurriedly, finding the rhythm my memory had kept all those years, until she started to shake and dig her nails into my forearm. I took her to the edge and stopped just before it, only to hear her protest. I did it two more times. I wanted her to understand, in her own skin, what it is to want something for years and have it torn from your hands.

—Please —she finally pleaded, her eyes glassy—. Don't make me wait any longer. Not after all this time.

I unbuckled my belt. When I entered her, both of us held our breath at the same time, as if the body remembered something the mind had been determined to deny. She wrapped her legs around my waist and dug her heels in, driving me deeper.

I was not gentle. I moved with all the resentment of a decade, holding her by the hips, looking into her eyes so I wouldn't miss a single expression. And she met every thrust by murmuring my name, swearing between gasps that she had been wrong, that she had never stopped loving me, that tonight she was mine and no one else's.

—Say it again —I demanded, without stopping.

—Yours —she moaned—. Only yours. I was never his.

I covered her mouth with my hand when she started to cry out, not for discretion, but because I wanted to feel the tremor of her pleasure against my palm. She came apart beneath me with a long shudder that ran through her whole body, and that was my limit. I buried myself to the hilt and let go, emptying myself inside the woman who had broken me and who that night, at last, belonged to me again.

***

We stayed quiet for a while, our bodies tangled on the leather, catching our breath. Outside, the city remained indifferent.

—And now what? —she asked softly, tracing circles on my chest with her finger—. Are you going to accept the company thing?

I smiled in the dark. There she was again, the real Helena, calculating even naked.

—I'm going to accept it —I said—. And I'm going to sit every day in the same room as my brother. And every time I look at him, I'll know his wife came looking for me in the middle of the night.

She sat up, alarmed.

—You won't tell him.

—No need —I replied, pulling her back to me—. It's enough that I know. And that you come back tomorrow.

She didn't say no. And as I felt her settle against my body, I understood that old Esteban, without meaning to, had given me back the only thing money could never buy me. Betrayal, after all, had its echoes. And some of them sounded exactly like revenge.