Part 4 — Seven days before the wedding, my fiancé abandoned me, but when I stood beside his brother, Sebastian suddenly stopped smiling

Nicolás placed the phone on the table, as if the object were heating up.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He said that if we distribute the recordings, he will take all of us to court.”

Eduardo smiled bitterly.

“He still thinks that he can bring everything back through threats.”

That same night my phone did not stop ringing. Sebastian called me from a new number. Then his lawyer called me. Finally his mother called me and told me that I should not take family problems into public.

I did not answer a single call.

Nicolás called the lawyer.

“If we continue with the wedding, all this must be legally protected,” he told him.

The lawyer listened to the recordings and remained silent for a long time.

“I will no longer be Sebastian’s representative,” he said at last. “Tomorrow morning I will send a statement. It is impossible to be in opposition to you in this matter.”

Sebastian lost control for the first time then.

The next day he parked his car near my house. He lowered the window and called to me in the street.

“Valeria, just talk to me.”

I was standing on the balcony. In my hand I held the same ivory ribbon that I had left on the table at the café.

“We have nothing left to say.”

“Camila deceived you. She deceived me too.”

“You yourself said that you would make me sign in my name.”

His face changed.

“That was taken out of context.”

“Which part? The one where you wanted to use me, or the one where you planned to get rid of Nicolás?”

Sebastian opened the car door, but did not get out.

“We were together for three years.”

“That is exactly why it hurts. If a stranger had deceived you, it would not have been so difficult for me.”

He struck the steering wheel with his fist.

“Camila will leave me anyway if I cannot give her money.”

“That is already your choice.”

I went inside and closed the door.

On Saturday, at the appointed time, more than one hundred and eighty guests gathered in the hotel hall. Many of them thought that we would cancel everything at the last minute. Some quietly asked me whether I was really sure.

I was sure of only one thing: I was not returning to my old life.

Nicolás was waiting for me at the altar. He wore a dark suit, and in his hand he held our wedding ring. His fingers were trembling slightly.

“You can still change your mind,” he whispered to me.

“You can too.”

“I would still want to be with you even if the recordings did not exist.”

These words reassured me more than any promise.

When the ceremony ended, the guests moved into the hall. Just then the door opened wide and Sebastian entered together with Camila.

Camila wore a white dress, as if she had prepared her own role at someone else’s wedding. Sebastian, meanwhile, had that old, confident smile on his face.

“This wedding is built on illegal evidence,” he declared loudly.

The hall fell silent.

Nicolás stepped beside me.

“Do not dare,” he told him.

Sebastian pointed a finger at him.

“You are my brother. I will take everything away from you.”

I stepped forward.

“No, Sebastian. For the first time there is something you cannot take away from me.”

Eduardo turned on the loudspeaker. His recording rang out through the entire hall.

“Valeria will sign. She thinks this is a common family plan. After the wedding it will already be too late.”

The smile disappeared from Sebastian’s face.

Then Camila’s laughter was heard.

“What if she resists?”

“Then I will deal with Nicolás.”

One guest covered her mouth with her hand. Another readied his phone. Camila stepped back.

“This is a lie!” she shouted.

Eduardo turned on the second recording. There Camila was telling her mother that Sebastian was only a wallet, while I was her guarantee of safety.

Camila looked at her mother.

“You gave them this?”

The woman lowered her eyes.

Sebastian looked toward me.

“Valeria, please. Do not humiliate me in front of everyone.”

His own words were still alive in the room.

“After the wedding it will already be too late.”

For the first time he heard his own voice through someone else’s ears.

Then his face became gray. He lowered his hand and seemed suddenly to realize that the words spoken in the past no longer obeyed him.

The police entered the hall several minutes later. The lawyer confirmed the materials submitted in advance, while the financial examination revealed several forged documents. Sebastian did not resist. He looked at me only once.

“You can stop all this.”

“No,” I answered calmly. “I simply will no longer protect you.”

Camila was led away separately. Eduardo chose to cooperate and admitted his own guilt. Punishment awaited him, but for the first time in his life he was no longer running from the truth.

Sebastian’s company collapsed within several months. The investors terminated the contracts. The documents with which he intended to use my signature became the main evidence in the investigation.

I did not attend every hearing in the courtroom. I wanted my life not to become merely a continuation of his crime.

Three months later Nicolás opened a small accounting consulting firm. I did not start working with him only to escape from his brother. I started because beside him, for the first time, I felt what equal partnership looks like.

We held the wedding a second time, peacefully. We invited only twenty-five people. There was no enormous hotel hall, no cameras, and no expensive decorations. There was a small garden, wooden benches, and the smell of earth after rain.

Nicolás took my hand.

“Are you hiding nothing this time?”

“I am hiding one thing.”

“What?”

“How happy I am.”

He smiled.

In winter, when the first snow covered the city, a letter from Sebastian was found at my door. He wrote that he had changed, that Camila had ruined everything, and that our story deserved another chance.

I read the letter to the end.

Then I gave it to Nicolás.

“Will you answer?” he asked me.

“I already answered.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing.”

It was the most peaceful answer I had ever given him.

That evening I opened the box of old things. Inside the ivory silk ribbon still lay. One end had become slightly crumpled, but it had not lost its color.

I tied it onto the new invitations.

This time beside my name there was not written a person whom I had to save.

There was only a person with whom I wanted to live.

The ribbon moved slowly in the breeze from the window.

And for the first time I was no longer afraid that someone would leave.