Last year, I had shown him debt projections at our dining-room table.
He kissed my forehead.
Called me cautious.
Then told me to let him handle the big picture.
Marcus laughed bitterly.
“She was right every time.”
Cain looked at me.
Something in his expression changed.
Not remorse.
Need.
That was worse.
“Rita.”
“No.”
“You understand the financing better than anyone.”
I almost couldn’t believe it.
Thirty minutes earlier, I had been useful and replaceable.
Now the empire was bleeding.
Suddenly, I was brilliant again.
“Rita, listen to me.”
I stepped backward.
“We can fix this.”
There it was.
We.
The favorite word of men who had spent years saying
I
.
I shook my head.
“No, Cain.”
His eyes pleaded now.
“We built this.”
“I thought you built it from nothing.”
He flinched.
“Rita.”
“You said I hosted dinners.”
“I was angry.”
“You said I remembered birthdays.”
“I was trying to—”
“You said useful things eventually get replaced.”
His mouth closed.
I handed the microphone to Daniel.
Then I looked at my husband for what I knew would be the final time as his wife.
“Then replace me.”
I walked off the stage.
My mother followed.
Behind us, the ballroom dissolved into chaos.
Reporters shouted questions.
Investors surrounded Daniel.
Board members demanded documents.
Sophia disappeared into a side corridor.
Marcus stood beneath the chandeliers looking twenty years older.
And Cain remained onstage beside the enormous wall of roses bearing our initials.
R & C.
By nine thirty, hotel staff were removing them.
I went upstairs.
My suite overlooked the fountains.
For almost an hour, I sat at the window without turning on the lights.
I thought I would feel powerful.
Instead, grief arrived.
Quietly.
It wasn’t grief for the man downstairs.
I wasn’t sure that man had ever existed.
I mourned the man from fifteen years earlier.
The one who ate noodles with me from takeout boxes on the floor of our first apartment.
The one who used to practice investor pitches while I timed him with my phone.
The one who cried when we landed our first major project.
The man who once looked at me in a rented courthouse hallway and said:
“If I ever become someone important, promise you’ll remind me who I was.”
I had tried.
God, I had tried.
Somewhere along the way, Cain decided remembering who he had been was beneath him.
There was a knock at my door.
I expected my mother.
Instead, it was Sophia.
Her makeup was gone.
Her hair was pulled back.
Without the emerald gown’s theatrical perfection, she looked younger.
Exhausted.
Human.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said.
“I know.”
I started closing the door.
She held out an envelope.
“Please.”
I looked at it.
“What is this?”
“Something I should have given you months ago.”
I didn’t move.
Sophia swallowed.
“I’m sorry.”
“You participated in humiliating me in front of three hundred people.”
“I know.”
“You stood in my ballroom wearing diamonds he bought while he was still married to me.”
Her eyes filled.
“I know.”
“You watched him plan to destroy me.”
“I didn’t know about the forged signatures until that meeting.”
“But you stayed.”
“Yes.”
At least she didn’t lie.
I looked at the envelope.
“What’s inside?”
“A letter.”
“From you?”
“No.”
That made me pause.
“From who?”
Sophia looked toward the hallway.
Then at me.
“Your grandmother.”
My entire body went cold.
“My grandmother died four years ago.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you have a letter from her?”
Sophia’s hands trembled.
“Because she gave it to my mother.”
I stared at her.
She continued.
“My mother was Elena Restrepo.”
The name reached somewhere deep inside my memory.
Not a face.
A voice.
A kitchen.
My grandmother’s house in Santa Fe.
Two women laughing.
