09/25/2025
My husband left me on the side of the road with these words: “You’re worthless to anyone.” But an hour later, a limousine he had only ever seen in movies pulled up in front of me…
“Sell. And please, Clara, spare me your dramatic sighs,” Alberto’s voice cut through the air as I gazed out the window at the old chestnut trees—the same ones where, as a child, I hid slips of paper with my secrets.
“Alberto, I told you… we agreed not to reopen this topic.”
“Agreed? I never agreed to anything. I only gave you time to accept the inevitable.”
I wandered through the apartment I had inherited from my grandmother, my fingers brushing the dusty piano lid as if I were inspecting merchandise he wanted to put up for sale.
“For me, this place isn’t just an apartment. It’s memory.”
“You can’t live off memory. I need capital. Or would you rather we stay trapped forever on an office salary?”
He knew exactly where to strike—at my guilt, my fear of being a bad wife, of holding him back.
“But I promised my grandmother I’d never sell…”
Alberto laughed coldly.
“Promises to the dead don’t pay bills. I promised myself I’d be successful. That means breaking free of this cage that reeks of mothballs and the past.”
His gaze pressed down on me like iron.
“Understand, Clara? This is the only right decision for our family.”
“Our family.” He always used those words when he wanted something—when he needed a loan for his car, when he made me cancel trips with my friends.
“I can’t, Alberto,” I whispered. But he heard.
“Can’t you? Don’t you realize that without me, you’re nothing? Nobody! Who would want you, with your ridiculous principles and your promises to ghosts?”
He didn’t raise his voice. He said it calmly, like a verdict—and that made it even more terrifying.
In the days that followed, he slipped into the role of the perfect husband. He brought me fresh juices, sent tender messages. But I knew his pattern well: first, strike. Then soothe me into silence with false affection.
The climax came when he walked in with an elegantly dressed man—Riccardo Bianchi, a real estate appraiser. “Just a friend,” Alberto said with his practiced smile. But Riccardo’s eyes gleamed with hunger.
“Excellent location, old Viennese neighborhood. Quick sale, of course. But everything must be demolished,” Riccardo remarked without even glancing at me.
It felt like I was saying goodbye to every corner of my life while a stranger reduced my memories to numbers on a page.
And then I remembered my grandmother’s words: “This isn’t just a house. It’s your fortress. Men come and go, but the fortress remains.”
When Alberto and his mother, Señora Lucía, began shoving photographs, letters, and old books into sacks, something inside me broke. But not toward despair—toward clarity.
I recalled another memory: a business card forgotten in a drawer, left by my grandmother’s loyal friend, Alexander Weiss.
“If the destroyers ever come and you can’t stop them alone, call him,” she had once told me.
In that moment, I understood. The game was up. I smiled for the first time in ages and told Alberto what he longed to hear:
“You’re right.”
He believed he had won. But that was the moment I began to win.
A few days later, on a deserted road near Barcelona, after learning that the sale had been blocked by my lawyer, Alberto shoved me out of the car with one last scream:
“Nobody loves you!”
The dust from the tires still hung in the air when I pulled out my phone. Weiss’s number was already dialed.
“Mr. Alexander? This is Clara. The time has come.”
👉 The continuation is in the c0mments 👇👇👇
