You used to smile when they said that.
In the first years, before the money came, he had kissed your forehead while you worked through spreadsheets on the kitchen table. He had brought you coffee at 2:00 a.m. and said, “We’ll remember this when we’re rich.” You believed him because those were the years when ambition still wore the costume of love.
Then growth arrived, and with it investors, consultants, private dinners, media training, and a hunger in him that was never satisfied by success, only sharpened by it. Every milestone changed the texture of your marriage. First he needed more time. Then more control. Then more admiration. Then more women looking at him like he was the future.
The pregnancy had annoyed him.
He never said it like that, of course. Men like Álvaro do not describe themselves with ugly verbs when smoother ones are available. He said the babies had changed timing. He said expansion into the U.S. market was delicate. He said you were emotional, tired, distracted, too focused on “domestic details.” He said it with the impatience of someone inconvenienced by biology.
And then there was Lucía, always appearing with a folder in one hand and loyalty in the other.