PART 1

—You've let yourself go, Camila... you're not the same person anymore.

Rodrigo said this sitting in the dining room, his elbows on the table and a calm that was more unsettling than a scream. Outside, it was raining over the Narvarte streets, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee lingered in the kitchen, as if that afternoon were normal.

Camila looked at him without batting an eyelid.

They had been married for 10 years. She was 38, worked as a communication coordinator at a dental clinic in Rome, and had learned to live by measuring her gestures to avoid upsetting him. Rodrigo, the regional manager of a health supplement company, always spoke nicely in front of others. At family gatherings, he was the patient husband, the exemplary son, the man who was “too good.”

At home, however, he knew how to break her without raising his voice.

—You used to look better, Camila. You used to have more energy. I don’t know... you were more of a woman.

Camila felt a dry blow to the chest, but she didn't lower her gaze. She remembered the times he had asked her to change because a blouse “didn’t suit her,” the days he would hide compliments behind criticism, the dinners where his mother-in-law would say a wife should “keep her husband interested.”

Doña Elvia, Rodrigo’s mother, already had her version: Camila had become cold, bitter, dull. And Rodrigo, poor Rodrigo, was only resisting.

—I want a divorce, he said.

There was no crying. No plea.

Camila only asked:

—Is there someone else?

Rodrigo clenched his jaw.

—Don't start with melodramas. This marriage died because you stopped trying.

That sentence would have devastated Camila a year ago. But that afternoon, it didn't.

Because three nights earlier, while Rodrigo was asleep, her cell phone had vibrated on the desk. The screen lit up, showing a complete message from a woman named Fernanda:

“Tell him it's over. I don't know how you lasted so long with someone who's not even pretty. Our child doesn't deserve to live hidden.”

Camila didn't unlock anything. She only took a photo of the message with her own phone. Then she opened a notebook and started writing down dates.

The next day, she went to the bank. She asked for statements of the joint credit card, account movements, and copies of transfers. The executive asked if everything was okay.

Camila replied yes.

It wasn't true.

In four hours, she found rental payments in Del Valle, restaurants in Polanco, flight tickets to Mérida, and charges from a maternity store. Everything was paid with money Rodrigo said he used for the house.

That night, when he asked for a divorce, Camila knew she wasn't facing a tired husband. She was facing a man who had prepared his abandonment like a advertising campaign.

Rodrigo left a folder with documents on the table.

—My family knows everything, he said.

Camila breathed slowly.

—Okay.

He frowned, uncomfortable with her calm.

What Rodrigo didn't know was that, after closing the door, Camila would climb a chair to the closet, pull down an old black backpack, and take out her professional camera her grandmother had given her before she died.

And when she reviewed the case, she would find something she wasn't looking for: a memory card with photos that could destroy not only her lie, but also the perfect image of her entire family.