Chapter 8 - Behind Bars
The visiting room of the federal prison smelled of cheap disinfectant, old sweat, and quiet despair.
Adrián sat at the bolted-down metal table, his hands cuffed to a steel loop in the center. The heavy glass partition separated him from the only visitor he had received in weeks.
It wasn't Valeria. It wasn't even his lawyers, who had stopped answering his calls once their retainers ran dry.
It was Mariana.
Her hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, her expensive clothes replaced by a faded thrift-store jacket. The arrogance that had defined her at the hotel gala was entirely gone, replaced by a bitter, hollow resentment.
“They’re evicting my parents from their house, Adrián,” Mariana spat, her voice trembling with fury as she slammed her palm against the glass partition. “The banks say the mortgage was tied to one of your shell companies. We have nowhere to go. Mateo is crying every night asking why his father is a thief.”
Adrián looked at her through the smudged glass, feeling nothing—not love, not guilt, not even anger. Just a profound, suffocating emptiness.
“You wanted my life, Mariana,” Adrián said, his voice flat and dead. “You wanted the penthouse, the gala, the title. Well, you got it. This is what was underneath the glitter.”
“You lied to me!” she shrieked, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. “You told me you were a self-made billionaire! You told me Valeria was just a meek nobody you could throw away like trash!”
“She was never a nobody,” Adrián whispered, staring at his own reflection in the glass. “She was the only real thing I ever had. And I traded her for a mirror.”
A prison guard stepped up behind Mariana, tapping her shoulder. “Visiting time is over. Move along.”
May you like
She stood up, glaring through the glass with pure venom. “I hope you rot in here, Adrián. I hope you spend every single day remembering that you had everything—and you threw it away for nothing.”
She turned and walked out of the room, leaving Adrián alone in the dim, humming silence of the cell block, staring at a blank wall that offered no exit.
