Chapter 3 - The Confession He Never Delivered
Sofia nodded.
“All right.”
“No matter what he says.”
“I understand.”
Elena looked at her sister.
“Sofia?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t hate him for me.”
Sofia swallowed.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because I don’t have enough strength right now to manage your anger too.”
Sofia’s face crumpled for only a second.
Then she leaned forward and kissed Elena’s forehead.
“You won’t have to manage anything.”
---
Victor accepted Elena’s decision without argument.
That surprised Sofia.
He simply nodded when she told him.
“Can you tell her I’m here?”
“She knows.”
“Tell her I’m not leaving.”
Sofia’s expression cooled.
“Victor, you should be careful not to make what you need more important than what she needs.”
The sentence struck him with uncomfortable accuracy.
He looked toward Elena’s room.
“What does she need?”
“Space.”
Victor nodded.
Then he did something Sofia had rarely seen him do.
He listened.
He left the hospital.
Not because he wanted to.
Because Elena had asked.
---
Three days later, Elena moved from intensive monitoring to a private cardiac floor.
Flowers filled the room.
Business partners.
Friends.
Charities.
People she had not spoken to in years.
Victor sent nothing.
Not even a card.
At first she thought perhaps he had finally stopped caring.
Then Sofia explained.
“He asked me whether flowers would upset you.”
Elena looked at her sister.
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“So he sent nothing?”
“He said he would rather look indifferent than make you feel cornered.”
Elena turned back toward the window.
That sounded more like the Victor she had married than the man she had lived with recently.
Which made everything harder.
On the fourth afternoon, Daniel appeared.
He carried a small overnight bag.
“Your things,” he said.
Elena smiled faintly.
“Thank you.”
“Sofia gave me the list.”
Daniel placed the bag beside the chair.
He looked exhausted.
“Is Victor making your life impossible?”
“Actually, no.”
“That must be unsettling.”
Daniel almost smiled.
“It is.”
Elena watched him.
Daniel had always been loyal to Victor, but never blindly so.
“Did you know?”
His smile disappeared.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I knew something was wrong with him. I didn’t know it was that.”
“What was wrong with him?”
Daniel hesitated.
Elena noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing I should explain for him.”
“I’m asking.”
Daniel sat.
“For the last year, Victor has been sleeping about four hours a night. Sometimes less.”
“I know.”
“He was also seeing a therapist.”
That surprised her.
“Victor?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Thursday mornings before the office.”
Elena almost laughed.
Victor had told her Thursday mornings were investor calls.
“Why?”
“I don’t know everything. But his father’s death affected him more than he admitted.”
Victor’s father, Carlo Romano, had died eleven months earlier.
A formidable man.
Distant.
Demanding.
Victor had organized the funeral with the efficiency of a corporate acquisition and returned to work forty-eight hours later.
Elena had begged him to take time.
He had told her there was nothing to discuss.
Daniel reached into his coat.
“There’s something else.”
He placed a cream envelope on the bedside table.
Elena recognized Victor’s handwriting immediately.
Elena.
“When did he give you this?”
“He didn’t.”
Daniel looked uncomfortable.
“I found it in his desk yesterday while gathering documents.”
“Then why are you giving it to me?”
“Because it was dated two weeks ago.”
Elena stared at the envelope.
Daniel continued.
“It was never sealed.”
“You read it?”
“No.”
“Does Victor know you brought it?”
“No.”
Elena raised an eyebrow.
“You may be unemployed by tomorrow.”
“Possibly.”
For the first time, she genuinely smiled.
Daniel stood.
“At least I’ll sleep.”
After he left, Elena stared at the envelope for almost an hour.
Then she opened it.
The letter was handwritten.
Victor almost never wrote by hand.
Elena,
I have spent most of my life believing a problem becomes manageable if I can define it precisely. I cannot define what I have done to us without making myself sound like a coward, which may be the most accurate definition available.
Elena stopped reading.
Her pulse accelerated.
She waited until it settled.
Then continued.
There is something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you months ago.
I have betrayed our marriage.
Elena pressed her lips together.
The next words were uneven, as though Victor had stopped several times while writing them.
I kept waiting for a clean moment to confess, as though there could be one. I told myself I was protecting you until I could explain myself properly. The truth is simpler: I was protecting myself from seeing what my choices would do to your face.
Her eyes blurred.
I ended it this morning.
Elena froze.
Two weeks ago.
She read the date again.
Then the sentence.
I ended it this morning.
That made no sense.
He had been with Selena the night Elena collapsed.
She kept reading.
I have asked Daniel to clear Friday evening. I am coming home. I am going to tell you everything. If you ask me to leave afterward, I will.
The letter ended with six words.
I hope I am not too late.
Elena stared at them.
Then she reached for her phone.
Her hands were steadier now than they had been four nights earlier.
She called Daniel.
He answered immediately.
“Elena?”
“You said this was in his desk.”
“Yes.”
“Did Victor really end the affair two weeks ago?”
Silence.
“I don’t know.”
“He wrote that he did.”
Daniel said nothing.
Elena looked at the date again.
“Then why was he with her the night I collapsed?”
That evening, long after Sofia had gone downstairs for coffee, Elena turned the question over again and again.
Perhaps Victor had lied in the letter.
Perhaps he had ended the affair and restarted it.
Perhaps the whole confession had been another carefully planned performance he never had the courage to deliver.
Then her phone vibrated.
An unfamiliar number.
The message contained only three sentences.
This is Selena Vale.
You deserve to know why Victor was with me that night.
And you deserve to hear it from someone who has nothing left to gain by lying.
Elena stared at the screen.
May you like
For the first time since waking in the hospital, her fear was no longer about her heart.
It was about what she might discover when she finally asked the questions she had avoided for six months.
