Madrid had the kind of winter sun that makes you forget the season has teeth. The sky over Salamanca was a clean, impossible blue, and the light pouring through our apartment windows turned everything soft and expensive—cream walls, marble counters, glass decor that looked like it belonged to someone with effortless money. I used to love that light because it made our life look the way Alejandro wanted it to look: curated, successful, untouchable. That afternoon, though, it only made the truth sharper.

I was sitting on the cream sofa I bought “on sale” because Alejandro insisted we needed furniture that would “project success,” even though the investors he bragged about never appeared and every installment came from my salary. The apartment itself—our luxury address, our polished façade—had been mine to fund for four years. He called it “our home” when guests came over; he called it “your obsession with comfort” when I asked him to contribute.

When the key turned in the lock at two in the afternoon, I remember thinking it was strange. Alejandro never came home that early unless he wanted something. He walked in wearing one of his pristine suits—paid for with my card, pressed to perfection like a costume—and he didn’t even bother with hello.