After making sure Nina is comfortably settled in her crib, I turn on the baby monitor and go to the living room to contemplate the mess my life has become in just over a year, starting with my whirlwind involvement with her mother.
From the beginning, we were a mistake.
When we started dating, aside from the fact that she was beautiful, what caught my attention was her lightness. Although I had experienced some relationships before, I had never delved deep enough into a partner to understand certain subtleties in her behavior. So it was too late for me to realize that her apparent lightness was superficial.
Layla was constantly seeking excitement, and unfortunately, I only discovered what kind of lifestyle she liked after she told me she was pregnant. I don’t want to play the naïve card, but we always used condoms, so I was shocked when she broke the news.
Family is my pillar, and I wanted my child to be raised near me and my parents and siblings, so I did what I considered to be right and asked her to marry me. At first, she pretended to be happy. She was good at this acting business. But we didn’tneed more than a few weeks together for me to realize I had entered hell.
Layla didn’t care about our daughter’s health. She wanted to keep going out, drinking every night, and getting very little sleep. She rarely agreed to see an obstetrician.
I tried to be patient because of our age difference—twelve years. When we started dating, I wasn’t thinking that it would all end up in marriage. I thought we were just having a good time together, so age wasn’t such an important factor.
Still, with her youth and love for nightlife, I imagined that at some point, the realization that there was a life inside her would finally make her change her behavior, but things only got worse.
When her body started to change, she freaked out. She wore tight clothes to compress the bulging belly, went on the craziest diets, and of course, continued to come home in the wee hours of the morning. The peak, however, was when she appeared on the cover of a magazine kissing another guy.
To be honest, it wasn’t jealousy that made me impose a physical separation, but rather disgust for her behavior. Marriage is an institution that I respect. My example is my parents, who have been together for almost forty years, so even though I knew we had been brought together by circumstances and not by choice, I hoped that through living together, we would understand each other.
When I decided to put an end to it, I didn’t leave the house, because even though I couldn’t stand her anymore, I was obsessed with my baby’s safety. Layla had spoken several times about how common it was to have a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy, and that set off an alarm bell in me.
So I talked to my wife in the only language she understood—money.
Despite coming from a wealthy family, when her parents passed away, they were practically broke, and working to earn a living never even crossed her mind, so I hoped that if I could guarantee her extravagances, she would accept my proposal.
Thus, I said that if she went through the pregnancy with all the necessary care, I would give her ten million dollars after Nina’s birth, provided she granted me a divorce with shared custody.
I thought I knew her, but nothing prepared me for her counterproposal: she said that for fifteen million, she would give up full custody. How a mother could not want to be with her baby is something I will never understand.
Born and raised in a family where love and care for each other has always been the glue that binds our relatives together, I didn’t understand how she could give up our girl.
Despite this, my concern was always for Nina’s wellbeing and safety, so I didn’t hesitate to accept what she proposed, and even though she said she didn’t care about the child, I included a clause that she would be entitled to supervised visitation provided she gave forty-eight hours’ notice.
When her lawyer mentioned this benefit in one of the meetings we had before finalizing the divorce, she laughed and said it was totally unnecessary.
A week after Nina was born, she left the house.
I had no idea how to take care of a baby, and even though I hired a nanny and a nurse, I practically moved back in with my parents because I thought my daughter was too young to be in the hands of strangers.
Layla continued to attend parties as she had done her whole life. She gained little weight during pregnancy, and her body quickly returned to normal. It was rare for a week to go by without a new scandal involving her name appearing in newspapers and magazines.
The divorce papers were ready when, on the eve of my daughter’s three-month birthday, I was informed of the accident.
Despite our tumultuous marriage and never having exchanged a word since she left the house, except through our legal representatives, I sincerely mourned an existence cut short so prematurely.
Then, months after her death, I discovered something that made me act in a way that is not common for me: I took a risk.
I’m still not sure what I’m doing, but I’ll at least try to dig deeper into this story.
Even with the separation, legally I’m still the only one with a connection to Layla besides Valentina, since her parents passed away about two years ago. Thus, the responsibility fell to me to take care of her assets—which will now be inherited by Nina—as well as all the relevant documentation and deactivation of social media, among other things.
I left the social media to my secretary’s discretion, but the emails were too personal to delegate to others. Even though Layla didn’t deserve my loyalty, that’s who I am.
But I had no idea about the secret life my wife kept not only from me but from the entire world, and now, with the information the detective I hired gave me, based on the documents I provided him, I’m trying to unravel the mysteries of her past.
When I went to the café, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t the hurricane that is Olívia.
God, I need to think carefully about what to do.
