Mariana slid another folder across the table:

—Here is the draft of the criminal complaint and the expert report.
Feel free to choose.

He left home with a pale face and empty hands.
Camila followed him.
But two days later he called me.

We met at a coffee shop in Polanco .
She arrived without makeup.
With Mateo asleep in the stroller.
And a serene embarrassment in her expression.

She told me that Fernando had said something to her:
that I was practically an ex-wife.
That we’d been sleeping separately for years.
That the company was his.

I showed him, without theatricality, everything:
Two deeds, several extracts, the notarized act of termination.

She didn’t cry.
She just nodded once.
A long nod, like someone finishing tying up an unpleasant truth.

“So he lied to both of us,” she said.
“Yes.”

We didn’t become friends.
That wasn’t it.
But we left that table understanding the same problem.

That same week, Camila left the apartment in Guadalajara .

She went with the child to her sister’s house in Mérida .

In four days, Fernando lost:
The woman with whom he envisioned a future.
The office from which he gave orders.
The house he always believed he could return to.

The following week, when he tried to enter the company’s warehouse in Ecatepec ,
he found the workers changing the address sign.
And the security guard denied him entry.

I was inside.