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Unlike her parents, mine had many, many reasons to abandon me, to judge me, to resent the person I became.Still, they never did.He never lacked support and unconditional love never for me, and I know I could never do the same for anyone.Surprising me, the image of Isabella takes my mind by storm.That little girl deserves a father just like this, and I hope that one day she will find, I smile as I remember Antonella’s words,I am her father…It’s true, Isabella has already found it.
“May I join you?” João Pedro asks, and I walk away from my father with affection, soon after, he is hugged by my friend.
“João, Good to see you kid! How are things going?How has the married life been treating you?” Joaquim Valente asks with a huge smile on his face.
“Couldn’t be better!” my friend replies, and I watch the interaction of the two behind my glass.
“And when will this Godfather get grandchildren?”
“If it were up to me? Tomorrow. But Eliza has no intention of having children anytime soon, I can only hope for her will...”
“That’s the spirit! Learn from him, Marcos!” my father jokes, and I roll my eyes.
“Yes, Marcos! Learn from me!” João Pedro mocks, and I snort.
“Where is she, by the way? I haven’t seen her yet…”
“With my parents, I left her talking to my mother...”
“And how are things at Govêa?”
“It’s all right over there!” The CEO of the publishing group Govêa takes over the conversation and starts talking about the merger they are about to make.It only takes a few seconds for me to decide that definitely the last thing I want to talk about right now is work.
“Excuse me, I’m going to look for my wife...” I say, hugging my father in a farewell.
“You see, Godfather? He even learns fast!” João Pedro comments, I turn in his direction, scratching my nose with my middle finger, he chuckles.
“Bye, motherfucker!” I murmur in his ear, pinching his shoulder and walk away, looking for Antonella with my eyes.
I search the hall from end to end once, twice, three times.But I can’t find her, and I figure she’s probably just gone to the bathroom.I wonder how exactly the logistics of using the toilet work with all that dress, but soon I kick the thoughts out of my head, it’s not like it really interested me, it was just a curiosity.
I walk towards the toilets, however, almost twenty minutes pass without any sign of my wife.I frown, because no matter how complicated the logistics, it wouldn’t take that long, would it?No, I don’t think so.
I leave the ballroom.Probably, Antonella decided to take one last look at Isabella, and I’ll find her at the apartment.But as I walk toward the elevators, I hear familiar voices coming from the same hallway I was hiding in today, before the ceremony.Looks like I found her after all.
I walk towards the voices, however, I stop when I hear the question asked by the voice that can only be Graziella’s.
“How did he react?” I shouldn’t be listening to this conversation.I know I shouldn’t, but with the possibility of discovering something Antonella doesn’t want to tell me, that feeling of certainty that she’s hiding something from me comes back at me hard.
I narrow my eyes, approaching slowly, striving not to make any noise.Fuck, if she has nothing to hide from me, I’m just a husband looking for his wife, and if she does, what right would she have to tell me anything?None, not after making sure she wasn’t hiding anything and accusing me of paranoia.
“Better than I imagined… Maybe I should have told the truth from the beginning…” Antonella replies and I shake my head, agreeing.Maybe I should have told the truth from the beginning…” Antonella replies and I shake my head, agreeing.Things would have been so much easier in so many ways...
“What, Nel?Do you feel sorry for Asshole Marcos now?” Asshole Marcos? What the fuck?I frown not only at the nickname, but at the naturalness with which it sounds, as if it were used constantly. “And I have to admit, your acting skills are actually much better than I expected, are you sure we didn’t take drama class at school, Nel?” Acting? I feel a tightness in my stomach, realizing that I am about to discover something much more important than a little lie, I close my eyes and bring my index and middle fingers to the side of my head, squeezing there, trying to prepare myself for whatever I am about to hear, but it is enough that the words are said, so that I can be sure that there was nothing I could have done to prepare for them. “Because if you managed to keep the sweet and innocent Antonella in his eyes, after all that scene and everything that explains it involved, damn it! Either you’re too good, or he’s too dumb. Maybe a bit of both...” It takes me some time to realize the gravity of the situation, and when I do, I clench my hands into fists and clench my teeth.Anger like I’ve never felt swirls and bubbles in my chest, stomach, my head.My impression is that I could explode at any moment.
Antonella didn’t just hide something from me, she deliberately deceived me, acted, pretended to be something she’s not. And all of a sudden, all the loose pieces of the puzzle start to fit together.My body stays still, in exactly the same place, not because I want to continue listening to the revealing conversation, but because I seem to have lost the ability to move.
“You know I didn’t do it on purpose, right?Because the way you say, it makes it sound like I’m fooling him for pure fun!”
“Well, you may not be having fun, but I certainly am!I’ve told you.Your life has become my favorite novel!You needed to see Asshole’s Marcos face when the doors opened and you showed up, thank God someone filmed it.I really needed new stickers for my WhatsApp.”
“Grazi!”
“What? I give you a month, maybe two, until he’s completely surrendered, in love, licking the ground you step on!And, for God’s sake, Nel!Don’t you dare spread those legs.You’re like an avenger for every woman who’s ever been the victim of your husband’s bullshit.I wanted to see the face he would make if he found out that the sweet and innocent Antonella has nothing sweet or innocent and that she uses this excuse only to not fuck him, when she would have already fucked half of São Paulo if she had the opportunity.”
“I swear, sometimes...”
“MARCOS!” A loud voice calls me, freeing my mind from the endless cycle of thoughts into which it plunged with every word heard from the conversation between Graziella and Antonella.
