Part 4 — I Made My Husband Sign the Divorce Agreement, and He Dedicated a Celebration to the Future Property — Until the Lawyer Discovered Something Strange and Turned Pale

When I heard Lucía’s words, I immediately called my factory.

“Contact Niko,” I told the head of security. “Let no one in, and do not turn off a single camera.”

In response, for several seconds only breathing could be heard.

“Mrs. Valeria, Niko is no longer here,” the duty officer told me. “He left the keys in the morning.”

A coldness spread through my stomach.

Lucía picked up the phone.

“I am calling the police.”

Marko headed toward the door.

“I am not staying here anymore.”

“You will stay,” I told him. “For the first time, you must hear what your truth sounds like.”

He looked at me, but he had no answer anymore.

An hour later we were sitting in the factory’s security room. Monitors blinked on the wall. Lucía played the recording.

Marko appeared on the screen. Niko stood beside him, holding a small folder in his hand. They were coming out of my office.

“Is everything ready?” Marko asked on the screen.

“I copied the signature exactly,” Niko replied. “But if the lady checks the cameras, we will have problems.”

“Do not be afraid. She only follows her emotions. When she signed the divorce, we had already won.”

Marko’s face slowly turned pale.

It was his voice.

His words.

His plan.

When he heard his own words from the side for the first time, I saw how his confidence collapsed. He covered his face with his hands.

“I was only taking out a loan,” he muttered.

“And you were creating a false document in my name,” I replied.

“Patricia told me that this was an ordinary thing.”

Lucía looked at him sternly.

“Patricia is not seen here. You were making the decisions.”

At that very moment Marko’s phone rang. His mother’s number appeared on the screen.

“Do not answer,” Lucía told me. “It may be a warning.”

Marko answered anyway.

“Mother?”

His face changed.

“What? Which bank? No, do not go into the house anymore. Do not take anything.”

He hung up and leaned against the wall.

“They found something in the house,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“They took Patricia’s computer. All the messages were there.”

The police officers came that same evening. They opened a case against Marko and Niko for forgery and fraud. Patricia gave testimony the next day, but this was not her salvation. Correspondence was found on her computer in which she convinced Marko that my company would definitely “break.”

My mother-in-law called me several times.

“Child, you must not destroy the family,” she cried.

“I did not destroy the family,” I told her. “I simply no longer pay for other people’s decisions.”

Marko’s lawyer contacted me three days later.

“My client is ready for an agreement,” he said.

“What are you offering?”

“Withdrawal of the statement, if you renounce your financial claims.”

I laughed, but not with happiness.

“He put my name on a forged document and now wants to buy silence?”

“He is in a difficult situation.”

“That is the result of his decisions.”

The lawyer sighed.

“To tell you the truth, I no longer want to continue this case. He hid the full amount of the loans from me too.”

That was the first time Marko understood that he was alone.

Several weeks later, the audio recording of his statement was played in court. The judge, lawyers, and injured lenders were sitting in a small courtroom. Lucía turned on the sound.

“My wife cannot do anything. I also have a copy of her signature.”

Marko shifted in his chair.

The judge asked:

“Is that your voice in this recording?”

He remained silent for a long time.

“Yes.”

That one word turned out to be heavier than all the evidence.

The court declared the forged power of attorney invalid, left my house and company entirely to me, while the criminal case against Marko and Niko continued separately. The court explained to the lenders that my property did not cover their debts. They demanded from Marko the money he had taken in his own name.

As for me, I did not return home anymore.

I took only one thing from Marko’s room: a small wooden metronome that had stood on the factory’s first worktable. Years earlier, when I received my first order, my father had given it to me.

Its even ticking helped me then not to pay attention to the fear of the night.

Everything in the bedroom was empty. Only a dusty square remained on the wall, where our wedding photograph had hung. I left the photograph with Marko.

Patricia no longer had a new apartment. Oscar sold the motorcycle. My mother-in-law had to move temporarily to relatives. I no longer felt anger toward them.

Anger lay on your heart for a long time like a heavy object.

But I needed lightness.

Three months later I opened a new warehouse at the factory. The employees’ salaries were credited on time. At seven in the morning I opened the door myself, poured coffee into a small blue cup, and checked the orders myself.

My niece Elene often came to me. One day she left me a sheet of paper drawn on the worktable. In the drawing there was a large house, and beside it a woman holding the sun in her hand.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“No,” Elene answered. “This is the house where you are no longer afraid.”

I attached the sheet to the wall.

It snowed for the first time in December. I watched Guadalajara’s rare snow from the factory window. The employees went outside and took photographs with laughter.

That evening Marko sent me a message.

It contained only one sentence: Let us start everything over, properly this time.

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote to him:

“I am starting over. Without you.”

And I blocked the number.

When I returned home, I placed the wooden metronome on the windowsill. Its pendulum moved slowly, and an even ticking could be heard in the room.

I was breathing in the same rhythm as in childhood, when I thought that everything would end.

But nothing had ended.

For the first time, everything was beginning with me.

The metronome was still ticking.

And this time that sound was measuring not fear, but freedom.