Chapter 46
“I forced my way into your life. I chose to look for you.”
“You looked for me?” I’m more confused than ever.
“Yes. Right from the start. Going to the café that day wasn’t random.”
“And everything that has happened since then?”
His jaw is clenched, and I can feel that, like it is for me, it’s torture for him not to touch me. “Everything since I stepped into that café has been about you. It had nothing to do with the reason I sought you out. It’s always been you.”
We’re in his apartment’s office. Unlike the first time, I’m fully dressed—like a ballerina—and he sits across from me.
He opens a drawer and takes out a leather folder. “Do you know who my late wife was?”
What? Why is he bringing Nina’s mother into the conversation?
“Olívia?”
“I do know. She was a famous socialite. I recognized her in the photos in Nina’s room.”
“Yes, she was. When she passed away, Layla had no living relatives, so I was tasked with taking care of all her affairs. Shutting down her social media accounts, emails, everything.” He pauses and runs his hand through his hair.
“There were some outstanding matters, and among them, the final payment to a detective she hired to find you.”
“I don’t think I heard correctly. Why would she want to find me? We didn’t know each other.”
“I could answer all your questions, and I will if you ask, but I’d prefer you see for yourself.
Everything in me says to protect you, but you’re an adult.
I don’t think it’s healthy to keep you in a glass bubble.
So here is the explanation for why I looked for you.
When you’re done, I’ll be waiting outside to talk about us. ”
He leaves, and my body is trembling.
I’m not sure I want to open the folder, because something tells me it will hurt me.
I remember all the times he tried to talk about the past and I stopped him.
I pick up the folder with uncertain fingers, and right away, I see pictures of me. I skip past them because they don’t interest me. I know where each one was taken.
Next, there are printed emails. I check the dates. They started three years ago, and there’s an address of a detective agency as the sender.
I read the first one twice to make sure I understand correctly.
We found your twin sister.
My twin sister?
I recall the stunning woman’s features without seeing any resemblance between us, but the next minute, another truth hits me.
If I’m her sister, that makes me Guillermo’s sister-in-law. Or ex-sister-in-law, at least.
I take a deep breath, forcing myself not to freak out, focusing on the documents in front of me, pushing our relationship to a distant place in my brain for now.
Looking at the messages, it’s not the fact that I have a twin sister or that we look nothing alike that hits me but the timeline. She knew who I was three years ago.
Incredibly, I don’t feel sad but angry. I scroll through the emails and see that Layla knew everything. Where I worked and lived, even. Yet she never made a single move to find me.
It’s not because she was rich. It has nothing to do with money.
I’ve been through hell, yes, sometimes having to forgo buying food to pay for my mother’s medicine, but I survived because I was raised to be strong.
What hurts me is her lack of compassion.
She shared my blood and never tried to meet me.
It doesn’t make sense for her to have looked for me and continued gathering information about me when she had no intention of contacting me.
I do a quick calculation. Guillermo said she passed away when Nina was only a few months old, which means Layla had over two years to come see me.
She didn’t want to see me.
I’m about to close the folder when, underneath everything, I find an envelope. On the outside is written: Only open after my death.
The seal has already been broken, so I pull out the contents, even though I’m not sure I’m ready for more revelations.
The letter is dated ten years ago, and despite the ominous warning about opening it, I promise myself that today I’ll leave here with all the answers.
I hope all this is just a misunderstanding.
Layla, my beloved little girl, I will need your love more than ever now. And then, your forgiveness.
I stop reading. Why do I have this in my hands? Clearly, it comes from Layla’s adoptive mother. I mean, if both of us were rejected, I shouldn’t be reading the letter since I have nothing to do with this woman.
I put it back in the envelope.
“No.”
I jump when I realize Guillermo is back. “No what?”
“You need to read it, Olívia. It will hurt, but I don’t want to hide anything anymore.”
“You’re my brother-in-law.” I finally muster the courage to acknowledge that truth, and everything crashes down on me like an avalanche.
I’m dating my sister’s husband. Valentina is my niece.
A whirlwind of emotions floods me, and I start shaking.
“I’m not. I was. What I have inside me now, my love, is all yours. Even before I met you, it was always yours, Olívia. I’ve waited my whole life for you.”
He kneels in front of me, and for a moment of madness, my mind wanders, and I wonder what someone would think if they walked in right now. A rabbit declaring love to a ballerina.
“You’re my brother-in-law,” I repeat, half in shock.
“No, I’m a man madly in love. The one who would give anything not to hurt you. I made mistakes, and I promise that if you forgive me, there will never be any more secrets between us. For that, I need you to read the letter to the end.”
“I don’t know if I can. Tell me. I don’t want to touch anything that belonged to that woman.”
“Don’t you prefer to take a shower first?”
“No. I want to know everything now.”
He stands up and offers his hand. “Come with me.”
We sit in the living room, and I choose an armchair instead of sharing the sofa with him. “Before you start, I want to ask a question. Is what Joaquín said true? Did you publicly acknowledge me to protect me?”
“I won’t deny that my brother and I discussed a strategy to protect you. Showing our relationship to the world made everyone believe in your innocence, but none of that would have worked if I didn’t want you for myself.”
“But you’ve never talked about feelings before, and now you say you love me?”
“Because I needed to tell you about Layla.”
“Right. I’m rushing everything. Start from the beginning . . . from the moment you found her correspondence with the detective.”
“I sought him out as soon as I came across the emails. He told me Layla hired him to find her sister and then discreetly monitor her twin’s life.”
“But why? Based on the message dates, she knew who I was for a long time. If she had no intention of meeting me, why continue paying someone to watch me?”
“I’m sorry to have to say this, Olívia, but as you must have realized by now, your sister wasn’t a good person. Remember when I told you I had to pay her to ensure she carried Valentina to term safely?”
“Jesus Christ, Guillermo! I wish I didn’t remember.”
“When I came to find you, it was a last attempt to make sure my daughter had contact with her only living maternal relative, but to be honest, I planned to keep an eye on you from a distance. If you were anything like your sister, I would never have let you near Nina.”
“You thought I wouldn’t be a good person because of my relation to Layla?”
“That was one reason. And because of your mother.”
“Our mother? Did you find out who she was? Did Layla have her investigated?”
“She didn’t need to. Your biological mother raised your sister.”
“What?”
“You have no idea how much I regret having to be the one to reveal this to you, love.”
“Guillermo, I don’t understand anything.”
I think of the letter I started reading but stopped.
Layla, my beloved little girl . . .
My body is shaken by violent tremors, and when he lifts me and holds me, I don’t push him away. Instead, I nestle closer because something tells me a storm is coming.
“Your mother was very young and beautiful when she became pregnant with both of you. There’s no record of who your biological father was, but she married a wealthy man towards the end of her pregnancy.”
“So why was I put up for adoption? That doesn’t make any sense.”
He holds me tighter in his arms. “I love you, little firecracker. I love so many things about you that a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to prove it. I was smitten the moment I saw that bizarre choreography.”
I know what he’s doing. Guillermo is preparing me for an even harder blow.
“She didn’t want me, was that it? Why did she reject only me?”
He buries his head in the curve of my neck. “Because the man your mother married asked her to choose only one of the girls.”
I’m out of breath. I try to speak and can’t.
How can a mother marry someone like that?
I arrive at the obvious conclusion. “And she chose Layla.”
“Yes. She died in a plane crash with her husband two years before Layla passed away. I don’t know if your mother tried to find you, but she left instructions with your sister, which are in that letter, for her to look for you in case of her death and to divide the inheritance she received between the two of you.
Unfortunately, I have to inform you it wasn’t much.
They were practically bankrupt, and what remained, Layla .
. .” He sighs. “Anyway, I think it was her way of asking for forgiveness.”
“Buying my forgiveness, you mean.”
“Olívia—”
“No, Guillermo. That’s exactly what she did. She tried to soothe her own conscience but was still too much of a coward to take action while she was alive.”
I’m disgusted and strangely relieved I didn’t have to deal with that woman.
I remember my adoptive mother Heloísa. All the times she said she loved me.
“My adoptive mother chose me, you know? She told me there were a lot of orphan babies when I was left there, but she instantly fell in love with me. She was the best mother in the world, Guillermo. She would give the shirt off her back so I could have everything.”
“Who wouldn’t choose you, love?”
I ignore what he says because I’m still not ready to talk about us.
Still, I allow myself to be held in his embrace. My body feels like shivers are continuously running through it.
“How can someone choose between two children, Guillermo? What kind of human being accepts such an imposition from a man?”
“I don’t know, beautiful. All I can say is I can’t imagine giving up a child.”
“Neither can I. Do you see that, in a way, Layla followed the pattern? You said she didn’t want Valentina. She, like the woman who gave birth to her, rejected her own baby.”