“He had already started staging occupancy,” Claire said.
You looked at the document in silence. There it was. The whole fantasy. The sister in the guest wing. The parents upstairs. The children displaced one room at a time until your own house became a family compound where you would be expected to accommodate and absorb and smile through it because the alternative would be called cruel. He hadn’t been asking for compromise. He had been building a takeover.
By three o’clock, the first bank alerts hit Adrián’s phone.
You knew because he started calling before the real estate photographer had finished the second-floor bedrooms. The first call you let ring out. The second too. On the third, you answered and put him on speaker because Claire had already lifted a finger to stop you from being sentimental and you respected the warning.
“What did you do?” he demanded.
