Chapter 6: What She Never Asked

On Monday morning Valeria came to Emilio's office with a lawyer of her own.

She had changed.

The warm, pleading woman from Sunday lunch was gone.

She wore a grey suit and no jewelry.

She sat with her hands folded on the table.

Her lawyer, a thin man with a leather folder, did all the talking for the first ten minutes.

Emilio answered him with a polite, bored voice I had never heard before.

I sat at the end of the table and said nothing.

At the other end, Valeria watched me.

She did not look away once.

"My client would like a quiet settlement," her lawyer said.

"No press, no statements, and no talk of private matters outside this room."

"Private matters," said Emilio. "Such as?"

"Rumors."

"Rumors need a source," Emilio said.

He put a thick envelope on the table and folded his hands on top of it.

"I'd hate to find one."

Valeria's eyes dropped to the envelope for the first time.

I knew what was inside.

Iván's wife had put it into my hands in the hotel cloakroom, then given Emilio her number and gone home.

Eleven months of hotel bills, and every one of them for a Friday.

"We want the signature by the end of the week," Emilio said.

"The house stays with her. The cars stay with her. He takes nothing."

"Then what is he asking for?" her lawyer said, genuinely puzzled.

"His name back."

Nobody spoke.

Valeria turned her head and looked at me properly.

"Is that all?" she said. "Your name?"

"That's all."

"You could have had the money. Half of everything, Rodrigo. A court would give you that."

"I don't want anything you paid for."

"I paid for everything."

"Yes," I said. "That's the problem."

She leaned back in her chair.

Her lawyer started to speak, and she lifted two fingers, and he stopped.

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