Part 4 — On the Night of the Wedding, I Read a Message in My Husband’s Car, and the Smile Immediately Disappeared from His Mother’s Face

At Irakli’s last words, Marcus looked at the phone, as if the small device could show him a way out.

Then he tried to escape.

He turned toward the door, but my father’s head of security, Gela, was standing in the corridor. In his hand he held a thick black umbrella that was still dripping from the rain.

“Get out of my way,” Marcus told him.

“I cannot.”

“You do not know whom you are talking to.”

“I do,” Gela answered. “To a man who deceived his own wife on the very first night.”

Veronica sat down on the sofa. The fragments of the broken glass glittered at her feet.

“Call the lawyer, Marcus,” she said.

Marcus took out his phone and dialed a number.

“Dato, come immediately. I need you to stop all this.”

The answer was so loud that everyone in the room heard it.

“I cannot stop you, Marcus. I only defend what is legal. This is already a criminal case.”

Marcus froze.

“You are my lawyer.”

“From this moment, I am not anymore.”

The call ended.

Marcus smashed the phone against the wall. The screen cracked, but it did not go dark.

And for the first time, I was no longer afraid of his anger.

Irakli called my father and briefly explained everything. Levan’s voice was stern, but when he spoke to me it immediately softened.

“Nina, do you want me to come home?”

“No, Dad. This time I will finish it myself.”

Marcus turned his head toward me.

“You planned all of this.”

“I only saw the truth.”

“You can destroy my life.”

“No, Marcus. I did not create your life.”

The police arrived in twenty minutes. Rain struck the windows, while the cold air entering the room extinguished its drops. The officer explained Marcus’s rights to him and put handcuffs on him.

Veronica reached a hand toward me.

“Nina, think. We are family.”

“Family is the people who do not use your trust as a weapon.”

“They will take everything from you if you turn Marcus in.”

“I am not turning anyone in. I am simply no longer protecting you from the consequences of your choice.”

They were taking Marcus down the stairs when Irakli played the recording. It was a conversation between him and Veronica that the security system had accidentally recorded that evening, when they were discussing the plan in the kitchen.

Marcus’s voice sounded in the room.

“Nina trusts me so much that she will sign any paper.”

Veronica’s voice followed.

“Let us endure one year and everything will be ours.”

Marcus stopped in the middle of the stairs.

He heard his own voice.

Not someone else’s account. Not a distorted accusation. His own voice. His own laughter. His own cruelty.

His face became wet.

“Turn it off,” he whispered.

No one turned it off.

In the recording he said once again: “She will understand nothing.”

Marcus lowered his eyes.

At that moment I realized that sometimes the heaviest punishment is not someone else’s handcuffs, but hearing your own words.

In the morning, I found the house empty.

The guests’ flowers were withering on the table. In the bedroom, the white dress hung on a chair. Under the dress, my compass bookmark lay on the floor.

I picked it up.

A small scratch had appeared on its surface, but the compass still pointed north.

Of Marcus’s belongings, I left only his watch in the box. Veronica’s diamond bracelet was taken by the police as evidence, because it had been bought with money transferred from the same fund.

Three weeks later, the court confirmed the annulment of my marriage, while the investigation established that Marcus and Veronica had planned to appropriate my property, use forged signatures, and submit a fraudulent loan application. A case was opened against them. I did not go to the courtroom.

I did not want to watch their defeat.

I wanted to get my own life back.

Two months later, I moved into one of my father’s enterprise’s new offices. From the window, the river was visible, and in the corridors there was the smell of metal and coffee. I began working on managing the fund that I had previously known only by name.

On the very first morning, an employee asked me:

“Are you afraid?”

“A little.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Because fear must not decide the direction.”

I had learned these words from my father.

On Sundays I went to Levan. He no longer asked me whether I wanted Marcus punished. He only poured me tea and listened to my new plans.

One day, my little niece, Elene, drew me a picture on cardboard. In the picture, a woman stood at a crossroads, holding a small compass in her hand.

“That is you,” she told me.

“Where is this woman going?”

“Home.”

“Where is her home?”

Elene drew a large yellow house with a pencil.

“There, where no one lies.”

It was a simple child’s answer, but I cried for a long time that evening.

Not for Marcus.

For the woman who stood beside him and always silenced her own intuition.

In the fourth month, I received a letter from Marcus. The envelope was sealed with a court stamp. In the letter he wrote that he regretted that he had changed everything, that his mother had drawn him in, that our love had still been real.

At the end there was one sentence: “Give me a chance to start everything over.”

I read the letter twice.

Then I handed it to Irakli.

“Should I send an answer?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“What shall we write?”

I went to the window. The first snow came that day. Snowflakes quietly descended over the river.

“Write: ‘I have already started over.’”

Nothing more.

That same evening I returned home. I took the compass bookmark out of my bag and put it in a book. Earlier I had asked it to help me find the way. Now I knew that the direction had always been inside me.

I attached Elene’s drawing to the refrigerator. The little yellow house was slightly crooked, but light came from its windows.

I looked in the mirror.

I was no longer wearing the white dress. I was no longer waiting for someone else’s recognition. I was no longer checking the phone to see whether Marcus would return.

I put the compass in the book and locked the door.

This time I chose the way myself.