Part 4 — I Saw My Husband’s Betrayal and Found the Company-Sale Papers — When I Mentioned the Truth, the Smile Disappeared from His Face

Gabriel carefully took the phone from my hand and photographed the screen.

The quiet clinking of glasses could still be heard in the hall, but to me every sound came from far away.

Dimitri saw the message and his face changed.

“Who is this?” he asked Polina.

“I don’t know.”

“You said everything was under control.”

“I did not say that someone would send a threat.”

Ricardo put the phone on the table.

“Our lawyers are withdrawing from the deal. These documents and the threat are enough for us to contact the relevant authorities.”

Dimitri took a step toward me.

“Mariana, let us go home and talk calmly.”

“For six years we talked calmly. And every morning you made me drink something, then told me that I should no longer believe my own thoughts.”

“I was trying to help you.”

“Help does not make a person weak. But you were creating my weakness.”

At that moment two investigators entered through the hall’s second door. Behind them stood Gabriel’s assistant, holding sealed bags.

Dimitri stepped back.

“This cannot be.”

One of the investigators calmly told him:

“We have permission to inspect your belongings. You will also be summoned to give statements.”

Polina picked up her bag.

“I will not sign anything.”

“No one is asking you to sign,” Gabriel answered. “But from now on you will not be able to change anything.”

Dimitri turned back toward me.

“Mariana, think. If all this gets out, our marriage will end.”

Cold entered my body.

“Dimitri, the marriage ended when you made my health part of the deal.”

That night I had to return home alone. The investigators took Dimitri for questioning, while Polina called a lawyer. But her lawyer refused the very next morning after learning that forged documents and the use of company money had been hidden from him by his client.

I sat down at the kitchen table.

The vase of roses was still standing there. Two petals had fallen into the water.

At nine o’clock Dimitri called me.

“Listen to me just once.”

“I’m listening.”

“You often said that you remembered nothing. You said that you were afraid of meetings with clients. I told you that you needed rest. I calmed you. I helped Polina because I thought that without the company you would collapse.”

His voice in the recording was cold.

He had recorded these words himself in his phone’s voice archive. The investigators obtained a copy of it.

For the first time I heard my husband’s words from the outside.

He no longer sounded caring.

He sounded like a man who had repeated his own lie so many times that in the end he believed it himself.

“Mariana, are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me that you will fix everything.”

“No.”

I ended the call.

The next day I entered my office. Polina’s desk was empty. All the pictures had been removed from the wall except one—the small photograph of my mother, which had remained dusty in its frame.

Under it on the floor lay my old measuring tape. The one I had had in my bag at the hotel that evening. A gold-colored paint stain was still visible on the tape’s yellow surface.

I picked up the tape.

It took several months for the constant tension in my body to disappear. The laboratory conclusion, accounts, video recordings, and examination entered the case. The investigation established that Polina had planned the sale of the company together with Dimitri, while Dimitri had added a sedative substance to the infusion.

Polina was found guilty of forgery and financial fraud.

A separate case was opened against Dimitri for intentionally harming health and for threats.

I did not attend every hearing in the courtroom.

Sometimes protecting my own peace was more important than hearing about their punishment.

“Jacaranda House” was left with me by the court. The house also turned out to be mine, as Mother had planned. But I no longer wanted to return the company to its old form.

Three months later I moved half the team to a new office. Into a small, bright room with large windows and wooden tables.

I brewed the morning coffee myself.

I no longer drank the infusion.

At meetings with clients no one asked me anymore whether I was really all right. They simply listened to me.

Claudia came once a week and we discussed new events.

One day she asked me:

“Are you happy?”

I looked at the street through the window.

“I am still learning what happiness looks like without fear.”

Six months later the first winter snow came to my mother’s old house. My niece, Lea, sat on the floor and was drawing with colored pencils.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Your new house. Here the door is big so bad people cannot enter.”

I laughed, but my eyes filled with tears.

“And this small yellow line?”

“It is a road. You are going forward.”

That evening I received a letter from Dimitri. He was not writing to me from prison—until the end of the case he was under house arrest—but the words still looked like bars.

“Let us meet at least once. Now I know what I would have lost. Polina means nothing anymore. You are my family.”

I read the letter to the end.

Then I handed it to Gabriel.

“Do you want an answer?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“What shall we write?”

I went to the window. Snow was silently falling into the yard.

“Write that my family is where no one forces me to doubt my own mind.”

Gabriel nodded.

“And the meeting?”

“No.”

It was the calmest refusal of my life.

In the evening I remained alone in the office. On the table lay new contracts, clients’ letters, and a photograph of my mother. On the wall I hung a small wooden sign: “Here every decision is said aloud.”

I took the yellow measuring tape from my bag and put it in the desk drawer. The gold-colored stain was still visible, as if a small sign from that night had remained with me.

Before, I thought that this stain was evidence of carelessness.

Now I knew that it had turned out to be the first sign of my salvation.

Lea entered the room.

“Mom, are we going home?”

“Yes.”

I ran my hand over the tape, closed the drawer, and turned off the light.

Outside, snow was falling.

This time I chose the road.