—Are you happy with this now?

I put my copy away.
I stood up.

—No. I was happy before you decided to live as if I were an administrator of your whims.
Now I’m just at peace.

For a while, I heard news about him through third parties.
That he had taken on short-term contracts.
That Camila didn’t get back together with him.
That he saw Mateo some weekends in Mérida.
That he tried to start a small business with a friend and failed because no one wanted to give him credit for supplies.

In Mexico City, the business world isn’t huge.
People can forget infidelity…
but they rarely forget mismanagement.

I moved forward.
I reorganized the company.
I cleaned up the accounts.
I fired two employees who had concealed expenses.
I hired a finance director.

A year later, we opened a new warehouse.

We won back customers he had put at risk through negligence.

I didn’t need to reinvent my life for anyone else.
It was enough for me to truly rebuild my own.

Three years later, I was leaving a meeting.
I saw him across the street.
He was wearing gray overalls.
He was waiting next to a delivery van.
He had aged more than he should have.

He looked up at the facade of my company.
He stood motionless.
Above the door, in new letters, shone the name that should always have been there: Reyes Suministros .

He didn’t come to talk to me.
There was no need.

I understood then exactly what I had taken from him.
Not just a company.
Not just a house.
Not just a position.

I broke him of the habit of feeling indispensable in a place that never belonged to him.

And that was what he regretted most for the rest of his life:
Not having lost because he loved another woman…
But having lost everything because he believed that I would continue waiting while he divided my world as if it were his own.