There was no Singapore, no airport, no international meeting, nothing remotely resembling a real business trip.
Instead, there were three days of expenses in Valle de Bravo charged to a secondary business card, two hotel payments in the name of a third party, spa consumption, a private dinner, and a honeymoon package purchased with an account linked to a company that I myself capitalized in January.
That made me laugh for the first time since the publication.
Not because it was funny.
Because the level of male stupidity reaches almost poetic heights when combined with other people’s money and overconfidence.
At noon I received the report about Ximena.
Not only was she pregnant, according to her own account, but she had also spent months falsifying travel reports, claiming duplicate per diems, and using internal credentials to access information she shouldn’t have.
The most interesting thing, however, was something else.
His contract was still in a vulnerable period.
The relationship with Ricardo implied a direct conflict of interest, omission of declaration and sufficient cause for immediate dismissal with disciplinary review.
He wasn’t just a lover.
It was an inside risk with expensive heels and a strategically visible belly.
That afternoon I went to the office.
Not for work.
To see them.
Although they weren’t there yet.
I walked through my own company as if I were stepping into it for the first time, observing with brutal clarity every gesture, every smile, every door I had opened for people who later believed they owned the building just because they knew how to get in.
My name was on the main lobby.
That simple reality helped me remember something important: I was not a betrayed wife clinging to ruins.
She was a property owner recovering assets before sentimental garbage contaminated them further.
Three days later, Ricardo returned from his honeymoon with Ximena.
The airport, as someone from the security staff later told me, was their first real hit.
The cards didn’t work.
Not even when paying the driver who was supposed to be waiting for them.
The supposedly happy couple went from bridal smiles to nervous screams in less than twenty minutes.
Ricardo called the bank three times, then his mother, then a cousin, then the personal assistant who still believed it was a minor administrative error.
It wasn’t.
At that point they no longer had access to anything relevant except the clothes they were wearing and their pride, although that too was beginning to run out.
They took a taxi to Las Lomas, convinced that at least the mansion was still waiting for them, solid, silent and obedient, like everything that Ricardo always believed was his just because he liked living in it.
When they arrived, the gate did not open.
He put the key in once.
Then another one.
Then a third one, now without elegance, hitting the lock as if force could correct the law.
Ximena was sunburned, hastily made up, and visibly uncomfortable, but she still clung to Ricardo’s arm with that ridiculous loyalty of women who believe that betrayal will be romantic as long as it doesn’t touch them.
Then a guard came out of the booth.
It wasn’t the previous one.
Of course not.
I had changed everything.
“What does this mean?” Ricardo snapped, with the automatic arrogance of a man who still doesn’t understand that the scenario has already changed.
