The reply came almost instantly.
“I’d rather tell you in person. Can you meet now? I know it’s late.”
I looked at the time: 00:37. Marta, my sister, was sleeping in the room next door. Madrid was still noisy outside the window, as if the city fed on nights exactly like this one. I hesitated for a few seconds. Then I wrote:
“Café Comercial, in Bilbao, in twenty minutes.”
Half an hour later, I walked into the nearly empty café, which smelled of burnt coffee and fresh cleaning products. Diego was sitting at a table in the back, without the relaxed smile he always wore at gatherings with friends. He looked older, with dark circles under his eyes and his hands clasped around a glass of water.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, half-standing.
“Make it quick,” I replied. “Tomorrow I have to talk to a lawyer.”
His eyes widened slightly.
“You’re serious?”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
He ordered a black coffee; I asked for chamomile tea that tasted like nothing. Diego stared at his cup as if the right answer might be floating inside it.
“What happened tonight…” he began. “It wasn’t just a bad joke.”
“I know. Javier never jokes—he just feels untouchable.”
Diego swallowed.
“For months he’s been talking about you like that when we go out. He says you’re ‘below his league,’ that you married him to get out of your neighborhood, that…” he hesitated, “that you owe him your life.”
It didn’t surprise me as much as it should have. I had heard softened versions at home, small stabs wrapped in sarcasm. But something in Diego’s voice unsettled me.
“I can imagine that,” I said. “You didn’t call me out at one in the morning to tell me that.”
His fingers began tapping against the cup.
“There’s something else. A bet.”
A different kind of cold ran through me—sharper.
“What bet?”
Diego took a deep breath.
“At Christmas, when he closed the contract with the Barcelona studio, he got drunk. He said your marriage was a ‘temporary investment’ and that as soon as he signed that project and secured the bonus, he’d leave you. Sergio, like an idiot, told him he didn’t have the guts. So they made a bet.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
“A bet… about me?”
“About your life,” Diego corrected quietly. “Javier bet that you would endure another whole year, no matter how much he humiliated you in public, while he started ‘preparing the transition’ to a woman ‘at his level.’ Literally. Those were his words.”
The café around me faded slightly. The lamp above us, the waitress collecting teaspoons—everything felt distant.
“And you were there?” I asked.
“Yes. And I didn’t say anything,” he admitted. “I laughed like the others. At first I thought it was just another one of his boasts. But then I saw the way he spoke to you, the way you were fading. And tonight… tonight he crossed a line.”
I wanted to hate him in that moment as much as I hated Javier. But the only thing I felt was a strange calm, a kind of emptiness where the pain used to be.
“Why are you telling me now?” I asked. “Why not months ago?”
For the first time that night, Diego held my gaze.
“Because I got tired of being his accomplice. And because…” he hesitated, as if the word weighed something, “…for a long time now, you’ve mattered more to me than he does.”
I let out a laugh, a dry one.
“I’m not in the mood for romantic drama, Diego.”
“I’m not telling you this because I expect anything to happen between us,” he said defensively. “I’m telling you so you understand that if you want to do something—if you want to confront Javier—you’re not alone. I know his accounts, his emails, the tricks he pulls at the architecture studio. I know things his boss wouldn’t be very happy about.”
That made me raise an eyebrow.
“What kind of things?”
Diego lowered his voice to almost a whisper.
“Duplicate invoices, commissions he hasn’t declared, emails where he mocks his clients, compromising photos from company trips. He has too much to lose if someone decides to stop protecting him.”
The steam from my chamomile tea rose slowly, as if marking the time of my decision. I could walk away, find a good lawyer, file for divorce, and disappear. Or I could do something more.
“You want me to take revenge,” I finally said.
Diego shook his head.
“I want you to stop being anyone’s joke. And I’m willing to help you change the script.”
I looked at him for a long moment. Then I rested my elbows on the table.
