She looked at Rodrigo. “I accept the divorce.”
Rodrigo let out a bitter laugh. “Fine. But don’t come crying to me when you realize you’re walking away with nothing.”
Mariana lifted her chin. “That won’t be your problem anymore.”
She went upstairs, packed her bags, and resolved to reclaim the life she had given up.
Arthur found her in the guest room as she packed her old brushes and sketchbooks. “What are you going to do, Mariana?”
“I’m going back to painting. I want to open a new studio.”
Arthur placed a black bank card on the nightstand. “Take this as a personal loan. Start over.”
Mariana tried to refuse. “Arthur, I can’t—”
“You’ll pay me back later,” he interrupted gently. “Even if you stop being my daughter-in-law, to me, you are still family.”
A few days later, Mariana found a charming commercial space in a vibrant neighborhood surrounded by coffee shops and schools. She began painting the walls, buying easels, and advertising art classes for children.
While she rebuilt her life, Rodrigo was quietly orchestrating a far darker plan.
He began transferring marital assets into a close friend’s account and manufactured millions of dollars in fake promissory notes to make it appear as though he had accrued massive debts during the marriage that Mariana would legally be forced to split.
“When she sees she owes millions, she’ll come crawling back,” he told Valeria.
Valeria smiled, nodding along.
But she was hiding a massive secret of her own: she had never been pregnant. She was planning to secure fake medical reports through an acquaintance and get pregnant for real after the wedding was finalized.
What neither of them knew was that Arthur had already hired a private investigator to look into everything.
A week later, Arthur’s investigator walked into his private office holding a thick manila folder. “Mr. Sterling, we’ve tracked Rodrigo’s asset transfers.”
“And the pregnancy?” Arthur asked.
The investigator laid several certified documents on the desk. “We have the truth about that as well.”
Arthur read the first page. His expression hardened into stone.
“Don’t tell Mariana about this yet,” Arthur instructed, closing the file. “I want them to dig their own grave completely.”
And what lay inside that folder didn’t just threaten to destroy Valeria’s lie.
It had the power to leave Rodrigo without a company, without money, and without a family.
PART 3
Three weeks later, Mariana was arranging the first display of paintings in her new studio when Rodrigo walked through the door.
He looked around at the small easels, the bright children’s tables, and the cream-colored walls. “Do you seriously think you can make a living doing this?”
Mariana kept working. “Good morning to you too, Rodrigo.”
“Come home, Mariana.”
She turned around slowly. “Pardon?”
Rodrigo sighed, as if he were granting her a massive favor. “I’ve thought things through. Valeria is becoming exhausting. We can forget what happened. You come back, and we carry on like before.”
Mariana stared at him for several seconds. “You brought your mistress to a family dinner, stood there while she slapped me, and now you walk in here telling me you are willing to forget?”
He frowned. “I’m trying to fix things here.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You’re trying to recover the comfortable life you lost.”
The truth stung him. Rodrigo’s tone instantly turned malicious.
“Fine. Then I’ll see you in divorce court. Just remember one thing: I have over twelve million dollars in business debt. Since it was acquired during our marriage, you’re legally on the hook for half.”
For a second, fear gripped Mariana’s chest. But she refused to show it.
“My attorney will audit every single dollar.”
Rodrigo walked out, convinced he had intimidated her into submission.
Fifteen minutes later, Arthur called. “Tell me exactly what he said to you.”
Mariana was stunned. “How do you know he was here?”
“Because my son is as predictable as he is reckless.”
When she explained the debt threats, Arthur went quiet. “They are completely fabricated.”
“What?”
“I have copies of the wire transfers, the dates, the text messages, and the fraudulent promissory notes he created. I also know where he hid the assets.”
Mariana had to sit down. “Arthur… why are you doing all of this for me?”
“Because you did nothing to deserve this,” Arthur said quietly. “And if I cover up my son’s crimes simply because he shares my last name, then I am just as guilty as he is.”
While Mariana continued building her business, Valeria’s scheme began to unravel.
Teresa showed up unannounced at Valeria’s apartment and caught her smoking on the balcony.
“It’s… it’s a friend’s cigarette!” Valeria stammered, putting it out.
Later that afternoon, Valeria bumped into a coffee table, bumping her abdomen against the wood. Teresa gasped in alarm, but Valeria barely winced. “It’s nothing, really.”
That reaction triggered every alarm bell in Teresa’s mind.
She left the apartment and immediately contacted a trusted family physician. After cross-referencing the medical documents Valeria had provided, the truth came out: the records belonged to someone else.
There was no pregnancy.
Teresa arrived at her own home in a blind fury. The moment Rodrigo walked through the door, his mother slapped him hard across the face.
“Mom!”
“That woman was never pregnant!” Teresa shouted, her voice shaking. “She played all of us! And you threw away your marriage for a lie!”
Rodrigo drove straight to Valeria’s apartment, confronting her in the hallway. “Tell me the truth. Are you pregnant?”
Valeria crossed her arms, rolling her eyes. “No.”
Rodrigo looked as if he had been struck by lightning. “Why… why would you lie about something like that?!”
“Because you never would have left Mariana without a massive push!” Valeria snapped. “Your mother never would have accepted me! I needed to speed things up. We could have had a real baby later. What’s the big deal?!”
A wave of intense nausea hit Rodrigo—not just toward her, but toward himself.
He had traded a woman who stood by him when he had nothing for someone who had manufactured a fake life just to trap him.
He walked out without another word and drove aimlessly around the city for hours.
He eventually pulled up outside Mariana’s art studio.
Through the glass window, he saw her laughing with a group of young children as they painted colorful wooden animals. Her hair was pinned up, her apron was covered in bright paint, and her face held a light he hadn’t seen since before they were married.
She was happy. Without him.
Rodrigo lowered his head onto the steering wheel. For the first time, he understood a truth he had refused to accept: Mariana hadn’t lost her life when she left him.
She had gotten it back.
Valeria, however, was not about to leave empty-handed.
She knew Rodrigo kept an emergency credit card in his desk and knew his laptop password. She used a spare key to enter his apartment, accessed his files, and downloaded evidence of the fraudulent asset transfers he had made to hide money from the divorce court. Then she drained nearly fifty thousand dollars from his account.
That night, she called him. “I have all your financial files, Rodrigo.”
