Deceit

Every morning I picked her up for work. That dawn, out in the middle of the fields, I discovered she could no longer hide what she felt when she looked at me.

The two goons dragged me off to tour the machines while she stayed alone with the owner. When I came back, the desk was empty.

When I opened the door to the empty apartment, I wasn’t expecting to see him there with that smile. The client was running late, and the clock was silently marking our only chance.

At five in the morning, with my wife’s friend smoking on my terrace, I knew I was going to tell him about the night she herself pushed me over the edge.

He’d asked that no one in the building see him. When she locked the door and pressed her back to the wood, she was already trembling in his hands.

I’d spent five years waiting for my husband, and that night, with my sister-in-law’s lover in front of me, I realized my body could no longer bear silence.

When I opened that old folder on his computer, I never imagined a photo of her would be the beginning of my own betrayal.

I got out of the taxi without looking back. It was eleven at night, my wife was still screaming my name from the landing, and I only wanted to disappear from the world.

I went downstairs for ice and he shut the door behind me. With the party going on outside, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop him even if I wanted to.

Diego was asleep when he felt the mattress dip beside him. It was her, barefoot, whispering that she’d only come down to get her pajamas. His brother was snoring next door.

The elevator panel died between two floors. She smiled, stepped toward me, and said quietly that she knew exactly what was on my mind.

She had been married for fifteen years and had never looked at another man. Until Lorenzo offered to show her his workshop at seven in the morning and locked the door.

When he tied the black mask over my eyes and opened the private-room door, I never imagined that one of those masks hid someone I’d known since childhood.

I heard it through the ajar door: the laborer was fucking the secretary in the storeroom. That afternoon I went back to the office for more than documents.

I’d spent half my life with the same woman when that stranger in leopard print sat beside me and looked at me the way no one had in years.

I thought nothing could be worse than letting him drive me home. Until he shut the apartment door and I put my bag on the couch.

The doorbell rang at seven-thirty, and I knew my marriage had changed forever. She came downstairs braless, looked at them, and smiled.

I’d been lying to Mateo for months, and when he understood that I knew everything, I didn’t fall apart. I put on the blue dress, left the house, and crossed the city to meet Adrián.

I innocently asked whether I’d been her best lover. Her laugh was the first sign I shouldn’t have opened my mouth that night.

I kept their numbers in the drawer and knew I would never call. But I also knew my husband would never touch me the way he had before that night at sea.