2. Eric
— ? —
Eric
The house is too quiet at this hour. Three in the morning, and I’m standing in my study with a glass of whiskey I haven’t touched, turning a credit card over and over in my fingers.
Valentina Montero.
The name is embossed in silver letters. I trace each one with my thumb, remembering the way she looked at me in that hallway. Eyes swollen from crying, mascara smeared across her cheeks, blood on her hand. A woman falling apart.
But there was something else. Something underneath the devastation that caught my attention and hasn’t let go since.
I set the card down on my desk and walk to the window.
The city spreads out below me, Houston’s skyline glittering against the dark sky.
I built this view. Every restaurant, every property, every investment that brought me to this penthouse - I earned it.
Started as a busboy at fifteen, worked my way up to waiter, saved every cent until I could buy my first place.
Now I own the largest chain of restaurants in the city, and I still put on an apron sometimes, still take orders and clear tables at Le D?ner Charmant, the first restaurant I ever called mine.
That’s where I was tonight. Covering for a sick employee, enjoying the simplicity of honest work, when a woman in a burgundy dress came crashing into me and shattered something more than plates.
I don’t believe in love at first sight or any of that shit.
I’ve seen too much, done too much, been used by too many people who saw my money before they saw me.
But when I looked into Valentina Montero’s eyes, there was something.
Something hollow and haunted that made me want to understand her, to know what had carved that emptiness into such a beautiful face.
I wanted her. I still want her.
The realization settles into my bones, undeniable. I’ve wanted women before - wanted them, had them, forgotten them. This feels different. This feels like an itch I can’t scratch, a question I can’t answer.
But she was crying. She was bleeding. Whatever had happened in that private room had broken her, and the last thing a broken woman needs is a stranger asking for her number.
So I let her go. I cleaned up the mess, finished my shift, and found her credit card on the floor where it must have fallen from her purse.
I should have turned it in immediately. I should have given it to the hostess, let the restaurant’s lost and found system handle it. Instead, I slipped it into my pocket and brought it home like some kind of treasure.
My phone sits on the desk next to the card. I pick it up, scroll through my contacts, and dial the restaurant’s main line. The night manager answers on the second ring.
“Le D?ner Charmant, how can I-”
“It’s Eric. I need you to transfer me to Marianna. She was working the front tonight.”
“Of course, Mr. Bailey. One moment.”
Hold music. Thirty seconds of jazz that does nothing to settle the restlessness under my skin. Then a click, and a young woman’s voice, slightly nervous.
“Mr. Bailey? This is Marianna. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I need to ask you about a guest tonight. A woman - she came in for the Montero reservation.”
A pause. When Marianna speaks again, her voice has changed. Softer, more hesitant.
“Oh. Yes, sir. I remember her.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Well…” She clears her throat. “She came in alone. Said she was there for the Montero reservation, the private room. But there were already people inside. They’d been there for about an hour.”
“Who?”
“Her husband, I think. And his mother. And another woman.”
The words take a moment to process. Her husband.
She’s married. Of course she’s married. The reservation was under Montero - her married name. The private room, the anniversary setup, all of it was for her husband. And she walked in to find…
“Another woman,” I repeat.
“Yes, sir. It was… confusing, honestly. When the husband first arrived, he was holding hands with this blonde woman. Tucking her hair behind her ear, very affectionate. I actually thought she was the wife at first.” Marianna pauses.
“Then Mrs. Montero showed up, and I realized I had it wrong. She looked so happy when she walked in. Like she was expecting something wonderful.”
Oh.
The hollow look in Valentina’s eyes. The tears. The way she said the last four years of her life had been a lie.
She didn’t just catch her husband cheating. She walked into her own anniversary dinner and found him there with another woman, flaunting it, celebrating it. While she stood there with plane tickets in her purse and hope in her heart.
“So I got confused who was even his wife,” Marianna continues. “It looks like she wasn’t aware of this other woman at all. She ran out crying. I felt terrible for her.”
I think about my father. The late nights he didn’t come home, the perfume on his collar that wasn’t my mother’s.
The way my mother slowly faded, becoming a ghost in her own house, until one day she just…
stopped. Stopped hoping, stopped trying, stopped being anything but a shadow of the woman she used to be.
It took him leaving for her to come back to life.
She clawed her way up from nothing after that, worked herself raw so I could eat.
But I never forgot the years she spent disappearing right in front of me.
I was ten years old when I understood that my father had destroyed her. That his affairs, his lies, his casual cruelty had hollowed her out just like Valentina Montero looked hollowed out tonight.
My grip tightens on the phone. She’s married. She belongs to another man - even if that man is clearly a worthless piece of shit who doesn’t deserve her.
“Is there anything else you need, Mr. Bailey?”
I should say no. I should let it go. She’s not mine, not my problem, not my concern. Getting involved with a married woman, even one whose marriage is clearly imploding, is the kind of complication I don’t need.
“No,” I hear myself say. “That’s enough. Thank you, Marianna.”
I end the call and stare at the credit card for a long moment. Then I pick up my phone again and dial the restaurant’s after-hours line.
“This is Eric Bailey. There’s a credit card in my office that belongs to a guest - Valentina Montero. I need it returned to the restaurant’s lost and found. Someone can pick it up in the morning.”
I hang up before the night manager can ask any questions.
The card sits on my desk, catching the light.
Tomorrow it will be back at the restaurant, waiting for its owner to claim it.
I’ll forget about the woman with the hollow eyes.
I’ll move on with my life, my business, my carefully constructed existence that doesn’t have room for emotional complications.
I pick up the whiskey and drain it in one long swallow.
The burn does nothing to erase the memory of her face, the feeling of her hand in mine, the sound of her voice when everything she trusted came apart.
I should forget her.
I know, with a certainty that settles like stone in my gut, that I won’t.