The aisle smelled of white flowers and the expensive perfume of the people who had come to celebrate a wedding. Isabel Montes walked slowly so as not to trip over the lace of her dress. At fifty-five, she had learned not to rush when the ground seemed to shift beneath her every move, but that afternoon she was impatient. Diego hadn’t appeared for twenty minutes, and the wedding coordinator had asked twice if they should delay the start. Isabel wanted to see him, touch his lapel, laugh together about the nervousness that had accompanied them since breakfast. She grasped the doorknob of the white door. Before turning it, she heard Diego’s laughter. It wasn’t the intimate, slightly shy laugh she knew. It was a dry, sharp, satisfied chuckle.
She left her hand motionless. The door was ajar. Inside, Diego was on the phone, standing by the blue velvet bench. The thirty-year-old man who had been saying for months that he had found in her a timeless love seemed like a different person the moment he thought he was alone. Isabel could see him from the hallway, barely a silhouette behind the frame. From the rectangular window overlooking the courtyard, a generous and cruel light streamed in, enough to illuminate his face as he, oblivious to her presence, spoke with Marcos, his older brother.
—I told you, Marcos: that old woman is blinded by love. She doesn’t know how to live without me. After the wedding, we staged a car accident outside of Spain and kept her entire fortune.
The words didn’t come in bursts, but one after another, spoken with the confidence of a man who already imagined himself in control of the outcome. It took Isabel a moment to understand that “that old woman” was her. It took her another to grasp that the accident he was talking about wasn’t a feared misfortune, but an intention. Somewhere in her memory, superimposed, appeared Diego’s hands on hers, the night he had cried talking about his childhood, the enthusiasm with which he booked a honeymoon abroad. All those scenes went silent. His phone was still pressed to her ear; Marcos didn’t answer with any voice Isabel could hear.
She stepped away from the threshold without entering the bedroom. She didn’t want a shadow, a rustle of a veil, or the tremor of a breath to betray her. She backed up to the wall of the corridor, next to a crystal chandelier. There, her knees buckled. She bent down, her dress spreading in an ivory circle on the carpet, and tears streamed down her cheeks with a silent violence. She wasn’t crying only for the betrayal. She was crying for the times she had defended their relationship to friends who regarded the age difference with suspicion; for her own joy when Diego asked her to include him in the inheritance decisions; for the old desire, shameful to herself, to be chosen by someone who needed nothing.
For a few seconds, she felt as alone as when her mother died and she had to take over the family business. Then the memory of the plan returned, clearer than the pain. A trip. A staged accident. A will that left practically her entire fortune to Diego. The sum no longer seemed like a story of heartbreak, but a concrete threat. Isabel wiped her tears with the back of her hand, took her cell phone from the small inside pocket of her dress, and looked up a name: Elena Ferrer. She had been her lawyer for fifteen years and the only person capable of contradicting her without fear of losing her affection.
She dialed. She heard the call connect and spoke before the crying overwhelmed her again.
—Elena, cancel the wedding, the trip, and everything that comes after. Revoke the will I left in favor of Diego. Today.
She didn’t wait for audible confirmation, nor did she ask for comfort. She remained crouched in the same corridor, the screen lit between her fingers. She knew that a phone call wouldn’t immediately erase a notarized will, nor would it, on its own, prevent two men determined to enrich themselves from trying another path. But it was the first truly personal decision of the day. Whatever she did next had to adhere to a simple principle: Diego couldn’t yet find out how much she knew.
