I kept chewing slowly.
Suddenly he exploded.
“Where did you get the money!?”
His voice bounced off the walls.
I wiped my lips with the napkin, looked straight into his eyes, and said without trembling:
“From the same place you get what you hide from me.”
And in that moment, I saw his legs weaken.
Part 2
Javier took a step back as if the floor had moved beneath him. He grabbed the back of the chair, trying to keep the posture of a confident man, but the color drained from his face.
“What are you saying, Valeria?” he asked quietly now, as if he suddenly cared whether the neighbors could hear.
I set the fork down carefully.
“I’m saying I’m not stupid. And now I understand why you liked putting that lock there so much.”
He swallowed. His eyes moved to the refrigerator, as if the metal could protect him from the conversation.
“That was so you’d spend less,” he tried to justify, but his voice had lost its strength.
I leaned forward.
“Spend less on what, Javier? Eating? Existing?”
He shifted nervously.
“Don’t dramatize.”
I smiled—but it wasn’t a gentle smile.
“I ate lobster today because I had a meeting with the building administrator. Does the name Marta Ruiz ring a bell?”
Javier blinked quickly.
“What does that have to do with—”
“A lot,” I said. “Marta told me that for months there have been unpaid condominium fees… in your name. And that the foreclosure notice was sent to this exact address.”
His jaw tightened.
“That’s a lie.”
I placed my phone on the table.
“No. Here are the emails. The dates. The amounts. And the most interesting part: the account where some of the transfers were made. An account I don’t know. An account that never appears when you show me the ‘budget’.”
The silence became heavy.
Javier stared at the phone as if it burned.
“You had no right to look through my things.”
“Your things?” I repeated. “You put a lock on the food, Javier. And you’re talking to me about rights?”
Then I saw it—the micro-expression of someone cornered.
“I… I was fixing it,” he muttered.
“Fixing it?”
He took a deep breath and admitted what I had already suspected.
“I invested. It went badly. I wanted to recover it quickly.”
“And that’s why you humiliate me?”
He jumped up suddenly.
“Don’t humiliate me now with your ‘lobsters’ and your attitude!”
I stood up too, but I didn’t raise my voice.
“The lobsters aren’t to humiliate you. They’re to remind you of something: I’m not going to ask permission to eat—or to know the truth.”
Javier clenched his fists.
“What do you want?”
