Chapter 3: The Interrogation
The following afternoon, I did not cry. I dressed in a sharp black trench coat, drove downtown, and walked directly into the glass-and-steel lobby of Chloe’s corporate headquarters.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t cause a spectacle. I approached the reception desk, presented my ID, and asked them to inform Chloe that Mariana Torres was waiting in the lobby café, and that she had exactly five minutes to appear before I took my inquiries to Human Resources.
She arrived in four.
She slid into the leather booth opposite me. She was younger than I was, dressed in expensive silk, but her hands were shaking so badly she had to clasp them under the table.
“I assume I know why you are here,” Chloe said, attempting to project a polished, corporate defiance.
I stared at her with the cold, unblinking precision I used to reserve for diagnosing blunt force trauma. “I want to know exactly what narrative my husband has been spinning to get you into his bed.”
Under my clinical gaze, her defiance wilted.
According to Chloe, Alejandro had pitched himself as a tragic hero trapped in a dead marriage. He claimed we had slept in separate bedrooms for half a decade. He swore I was an emotional recluse who hadn’t spoken a coherent sentence in months, and that I had explicitly given him a “hall pass” to seek physical intimacy elsewhere.
Furthermore, he had told her that psychiatric specialists had warned him that serving me divorce papers would trigger a fatal, suicidal relapse.
“We share the same mattress every single night,” I stated, my voice devoid of emotion. “Three weeks ago, he was actively pricing out a bed-and-breakfast in Maine for our upcoming anniversary.”
All the color drained from Chloe’s face. “He… he told me he hasn’t touched you in three years.”
“He slept in my bed last night.”
A horrifying silence settled over the café table. The espresso machine hissed in the background.
Chloe unlocked her phone with trembling fingers. “We have been sleeping together for eighteen months.”
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second. “Did he promise to leave me for you?”
“First, he said he’d file after the winter holidays,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears of humiliation. “Then he pushed it to spring. Now, he swears he will file the paperwork the very second his regional promotion clears HR.”
Chloe flipped her phone around and slid it across the table.
Displayed on the screen was a text message Alejandro had sent her while I was supposedly sleeping beside him.
“She doesn’t even notice what’s going on around her anymore. She lives in her own little bubble of misery. Once I secure the GM title and the salary bump, I’ll pull the plug. She’ll throw a dramatic, pathetic fit, but where is she going to go? She doesn’t know how to survive on her own anymore.”
I stared at the glowing pixels. A glacial, absolute detachment settled over my nervous system.
Chloe looked up, wiping her mascara. “There is one more thing you need to know.”
“Tell me.”
“He told me that after your daughter died, he only stayed with you because if he walked out during the funeral season, everyone in his professional and social circles would view him as a monster.”
I remained perfectly still. I did not flinch.
When I finally slid out of the booth, the question was no longer whether my husband was unfaithful. The true, horrifying question was how many years he had spent weaponizing the worst tragedy of my existence to imprison me.
