“Alejandro moved assets before filing,” she said, removing damp hair from her forehead. “Not everything, but enough to make this ugly and slow.”
Valeria looked at the papers without touching them. The names of shell companies meant nothing, yet every line carried the familiar weight of his careful cruelty.
“And if we fight?” she asked.
Sofía hesitated long enough for the silence to answer first. “You might win something. Eventually. But he’ll drag you through every private detail.”
The kettle clicked in the corner, and neither woman moved to pour the water.
Valeria imagined months of hearings, gossip columns reopening wounds, strangers debating her dignity while she sat beneath fluorescent lights, swollen ankles hidden under borrowed shoes.
Her hand drifted to her stomach. One of the babies shifted, then another, a rolling pressure that made her inhale sharply.
Sofía softened. “I’m not telling you to surrender. I’m telling you every road costs something, and right now you’re paying with your body.”
That afternoon, Valeria went downstairs for bread and found the landlady’s daughter staring at her from the hallway with a curious, embarrassed kindness.
“Your ex-husband is on television again,” the girl said, too casually. “They said he donated to a children’s foundation with his new wife.”
Valeria nodded as if that detail belonged to somebody else’s life.
Back upstairs, she switched off the phone before checking the headlines, yet the words still reached her, sharp as if spoken into her ear.
