Chapter 6 - The Marriage Changes Shape
Sergio eventually sat for a deposition.
By then, the burns on my face had faded from angry red to pale pink.
He looked thinner.
Tired.
Almost ordinary.
That was one of the hardest things about abuse.
People expect villains to look different once you understand them.
They don’t.
Marcus asked:
“Did you know Rafael Martin’s identity before meeting Elena?”
Sergio hesitated.
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“Did you approach Elena because of her grandfather?”
“No.”
“Sergio.”
His lawyer objected.
The question was rephrased.
Finally Sergio said:
“My mother wanted to know whether the Martin family still had corporate documents.”
I closed my eyes.
“So you approached me.”
“I liked you.”
“That isn’t the question.”
His jaw hardened.
“I fell in love with you.”
I looked at him.
“That can be true too.”
For the first time, he stopped.
“You can love someone and still use them.”
Silence.
Sergio admitted Rosa repeatedly asked after we married whether I had old certificates, ledgers, estate papers, or corporate correspondence.
He searched my office twice.
My stomach turned.
“You went through my things?”
“You were my wife.”
“That isn’t permission.”
“I never took anything.”
“You married me knowing your family wanted something from mine.”
“I married you because I loved you.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
No answer.
The coffee assault also changed meaning.
It had not been an elaborate attack to steal the certificate.
That would have been almost easier to understand.
It was more ordinary.
Sergio woke up that morning believing my “no” did not matter.
Years of taking my money, lending my belongings, overruling my boundaries, and calling surrender “marriage” had reached its logical conclusion.
He burned me because I refused a credit card.
May you like
And because I finally left him over something that crude, I accidentally removed the one document his family had spent decades hoping would disappear.
The biggest threat to an eighty-million-dollar transaction surfaced because Sergio could not tolerate one woman saying no.
Related Stories
