Chapter Four

Mateo's reasoning for refusing the divorce had nothing to do with me. Of course it didn't.

"Thirty days," he had said through the phone later that night, his voice flat and businesslike, like he was negotiating a lease extension instead of a marriage. "The contract still has thirty days left. I need the scandal to die down before Camila's engagement to Andrés is formally ended. If we divorce now and I go public with her immediately, it looks worse than it already does."

"So you want me to stay married to you for another month so your affair looks slightly less disgusting to the public."

"I want thirty days, Valentina. That's all."

"Fine." I didn't even fight it. What was the point? Thirty days was nothing. I had survived seven years. "Thirty days. Then I never see you again."

He hung up without saying goodbye. Typical.

That evening, I sat across from Marisol at a wine bar downtown, watching her work through her second glass of red while she processed everything I had told her. Marisol had been my best friend since medical school, the kind of friend who would bury a body for you and then yell at you for getting dirt on her shoes.

"Let me get this straight." She set her glass down hard enough to slosh wine onto the tablecloth. "He wants you to stay married for thirty more days so he can clean up his image before going public with the woman he's been sleeping with behind his cousin's back?"

"That's the summary, yes."

"And you said yes?"

"I said fine. There's a difference."

"There's really not." She leaned forward. "Val, this man told you to abort your child. He gave your tiramisu to his side piece. His mother tried to slap you. And now he wants you to play along for another month so his PR looks better? What are you, his emotional storage unit?"

I stared at the wine in my glass. The dark red surface reflected the bar lights back at me like tiny, distant fires.

"I almost did it, Marisol. I almost signed over my shares. Forty two percent of MedAI. Everything Dr. Mendoza and I built. I was going to give it all up and walk into that family with Luciana and say, here, here's the daughter you told me to get rid of, please love us now."

My voice cracked on the last word. I pressed my lips together and breathed through my nose.

"I keep letting people down. Luciana deserves better than a mother who almost threw away everything for a man who couldn't even say please until another woman got hurt."

Marisol reached across the table and grabbed my hand. "You didn't sign. That's what matters."

Before I could answer, my phone buzzed. Video call. Dr. Mendoza.

I answered, and Luciana's face filled the screen immediately, half blocking Dr. Mendoza's reading glasses behind her.

"Mami! Mami, are you drinking grape juice? Can I have grape juice?"

"It's bedtime, baby. What are you doing up?"

"Dr. Mendoza said I could stay up because you were sad. Are you sad, Mami?"

I looked at Marisol. She shrugged. I looked back at the screen.

"I'm not sad, sweetheart. I'm just having dinner with Tía Marisol."

"Hola, Tía Mari!" Luciana pressed her face so close to the camera that all I could see was one enormous brown eye.

"Hola, mi amor." Marisol waved, already smiling despite herself.

Dr. Mendoza gently moved Luciana back and adjusted the camera. He was in his study, the one with the floor to ceiling bookshelves and the old oak desk that smelled like pipe tobacco and paper. He looked exactly the same as always. Silver hair. Calm eyes. The steady, unshakable presence that had anchored me through medical school, through the pregnancy, through everything.

"Valentina." His voice carried that warmth that always made my chest tighten. "I know what happened. Santiago told me everything."

"Of course he did."

"Don't be angry with him. He was worried." Dr. Mendoza paused. "You were never meant to shrink yourself for people who don't see your value, mija. I didn't spend six years mentoring you so you could fold yourself into a corner of that man's life."

I felt the tears pressing behind my eyes. I blinked them back.

"There is a healthcare technology symposium in three days. Santiago will be there. I want you there too." He leaned forward slightly. "And I want you in New York. Permanently. Grand Sage Medical is launching a new division, AI integrated diagnostics, and it needs a director. It needs you."

"Dr. Mendoza, I can't just..."

"You can. You built MedAI from a thesis project in my lab into a company valued at nine figures. You did that while hiding a pregnancy, raising a daughter in secret, and surviving a marriage designed to break you. Don't tell me what you can't do."

Luciana bounced back into frame. "Mami, does this mean you're coming home? Are you coming home for real?"

I looked at her face. My daughter. My whole reason. Five years old and already braver than I had ever been.

"Yes, baby. Mami's coming home."

She screamed with joy. The high pitched kind that made Dr. Mendoza wince and Marisol cover her ear with her free hand.

"And Luciana," Dr. Mendoza added over the celebration, "I'm arranging for you to come back to New York next month. Kindergarten, a proper home, everything."

"I get a new school?! With a playground?!"

"With a very big playground."

The call ended with Luciana singing some made up song about playgrounds and grape juice. I set my phone down and pressed my fingertips against my eyelids.

"He's right." Marisol's voice was firm. "Go back to New York. Take Luciana. Build the life you actually want instead of bending yourself around a man who never saw you standing right in front of him."

Something loosened in my chest. Something heavy and old and tired that had been sitting there for so long I had forgotten it wasn't supposed to be there.

"The symposium is in three days," I told her. "Santiago will be there."

"Good. Go. Wear something that makes Mateo Castillo choke on his own tongue."

I laughed. A real one this time.

For the first time in seven years, the ground under my feet felt like something I had chosen, not something I was trapped on.