PART 1
CHAPTER 1: The Cold of Abandonment and the Notification from Hell
The smell of cheap disinfectant mixed with refried beans from the hospital cafeteria seeps into your pores. It’s a smell you never forget—the smell of loneliness on a government hospital bed. Or rather, in this “second-rate private clinic” my in-laws paid for reluctantly, complaining about every peso as if it were being torn straight out of their skin.
I had been there for three days.
Seventy-two endless hours.
My body felt as if a city bus had run me over during rush hour on Insurgentes Avenue. A C-section is no small thing—they slice you open, pull a human being out of you, then stitch you back together and expect you to walk the next day. But the physical pain—the constant burning in my lower abdomen every time I breathed—was nothing compared to the hole in my chest. A cold, dark void, colder than a dawn at the Nevado de Toluca.
I stared at the wall clock, its monotonous ticking drilling into my brain.
4:00 PM.
“He’ll come,” I whispered, my voice hoarse from crying in silence. “He’ll walk through that door any minute with a huge bouquet of roses, the kind they sell at the Jamaica Market, and he’ll tell me traffic on Periférico was horrible.”
I was lying to myself.
I knew it—but hope is the last thing to die, right? That’s what grandmothers say.
I am Ximena—the “scholarship girl,” the “poor nobody,” as my mother-in-law called me behind my back (and sometimes to my face). And still, I clung to the idea that my husband, Braulio Cantú—the man I fought the world for—would come meet his daughter.
Luna slept beside me in the clear plastic bassinet. She was so tiny, so fragile. She had Braulio’s nose. Seeing her was like seeing him—and it hurt.
A nurse came in. She was heavyset, clearly tired of life and underpaid, but with kind eyes.
“Still nothing, sweetheart?” she asked while checking my IV.
I shook my head as my vision blurred again.
“He must be busy with the company,” I said, more to convince myself than her. “End-of-month stress, you know how it is.”
The nurse made that face that says oh honey, you’re lying to yourself, but she said nothing. She adjusted my pillow and left, abandoning me to my demons.
In that sepulchral silence, my phone vibrated on the cheap wooden nightstand. The sound buzzed like a fire alarm.
It was Sara.
My best friend since high school—the only one who never bought the Cantú fairy tale.
I picked up the phone. It felt like it weighed a ton.
The WhatsApp message glowed on the screen:
“Xime, I’m so sorry. I swear I don’t want to be the one who ruins your day, but you need to know. Please, for the love of God, don’t open Instagram. I love you, bitch. Hold on. I’m on my way.”
My heart stopped.
A massive drop in blood pressure made my ears ring.
What could be so bad?
An accident?
Did something happen to Braulio?
My fingers, shaking as if I were hypothermic, ignored Sara’s warning. Morbid curiosity and panic are a lethal combination.
I unlocked the screen.
Instagram loaded—mocking, colorful.
And there it was.
The first story on my feed.
I didn’t even have to search. The algorithm shoved it straight in my face.
It was Braulio.
But not the exhausted, stressed Braulio I’d been seeing lately. No. This was Golden Boy Braulio. The heir. The Polanco playboy.
He was sitting on a stunning terrace overlooking the Angel of Independence, champagne flute in hand. He looked happy. Relaxed.
And he wasn’t alone.
Clinging to him like a designer-dressed parasite was Casandra.
Casandra.
“The childhood friend.”
The blonde with the double last name. The one who always air-kissed me without touching my skin, as if I carried a disease. The woman who scanned me from head to toe, silently asking which street market my clothes came from.
In the photo, Casandra had one possessive hand on Braulio’s chest—and the other caressing her clearly pregnant belly.
Months pregnant.
My phone slipped from my hands and landed on the hospital sheets.
Bile rose in my throat.
I grabbed the phone again. I needed to read it. Needed it to be a mistake—a bad joke, an old photo.
The caption, written by Braulio himself, said:
“Celebrating life and new beginnings with my real family.
The Cantú heir is on the way.
RealLove #FamilyFirst #BabyBoy”
Real family?
Heir?
Baby boy?
I looked at Luna—my three-day-old daughter—sleeping peacefully, unaware that her father had just erased her existence in front of thousands.
“Son of a bitch…” I whispered. The curse ripped itself out of my soul.
Three years.
Three goddamn years of swallowing my mother-in-law’s humiliations. Of being reminded I should be grateful just to breathe the same air as her son. Three years of trying to be perfect. Learning which fork to use. Dressing how they wanted. Erasing myself to fit their porcelain mold.
All for this.
To find out through Instagram—while bleeding in a hospital bed—that my husband had another life, another woman, and another child on the way.
The emotional pain was so sharp it turned physical. A stabbing sensation tore through my C-section wound, doubling me over.
I screamed—a dry, broken scream.
