Chapter 5
The storm had passed, but what lingered between us couldn’t be swept away so easily.
On the helicopter back to S?o Paulo, Fernando was serious, focused, as if the night before had been a lapse that now needed to be erased. I tried to convince myself of the same thing. That it was just sex. That we were two people with needs and nothing more. But it was a lie, and we both knew it.
Inside that aircraft, without witnesses, without the buzz of advisors and politicians around us, the tension was still there. A touch, an exchange of glances, the charged silence. The desire hung between us, even as we tried to ignore it.
Back at the Bandeirantes Palace, politics swallowed us whole again. We’d barely landed before a crisis hit. News was spreading fast, and I knew Fernando was already aware before we even touched down. His phone buzzed relentlessly, and his expression went hard.
The moment we entered the government headquarters, we went straight to an emergency meeting. On the screen, headlines exploded like gunfire in a political war:
“Governor involved in corruption scandal: fraudulent bidding in Education could cost him reelection.”
His first reaction was to slam his hand on the table. Not hard enough to startle the team, but with the intensity of someone who knew how dangerous this was.
“This is absurd.” He ran a hand through his hair, irritated. “I knew they’d try something, but this?”
“Do we know where it came from?” I asked, trying to stay composed even as I felt everything about to spiral out of control.
“A small website dropped the story, but it’s already being picked up by larger outlets.” One of the advisors passed the printed pages around the room. “They’re claiming funds were embezzled during the construction of state schools.”
“This is a dirty trick,” the communications secretary grumbled. “We have proof that all the bidding processes were transparent.”
“That’s never stopped anyone from spreading a lie.” My voice came out more bitter than I’d intended. “Fake news doesn’t have to be true to destroy a campaign.”
Fernando planted his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes, taking a deep breath.
“We need a counterattack. Now.”
The atmosphere was heavy, charged with tension.
The work, the responsibilities, the dirty politics...
All of it piled onto the internal chaos Fernando and I were already navigating.
As if the external war weren’t enough, there was also the internal battle—the confusion of what we felt and pretended didn’t exist.
He hadn’t looked at me in minutes, yet I felt his presence like a magnet. Even in the middle of a crisis, even in the eye of a political storm, I knew he was as aware of me as I was of him.
“Let’s put together an official response.” I broke the silence. “Denial isn’t enough—we need to expose who planted this lie.”
Fernando raised his eyes and looked at me. Not casually. Not like a governor looking at his secretary. But like a man who, last night, had held my face in his hands while kissing me as if the world were about to end.
It was quick. A second, maybe two. But enough for heat to flood my chest.
“Right.” He nodded, looking away immediately. “I want this resolved before it affects the campaign.”
The meeting continued, and politics became the center of our lives again. But deep down, I knew something had shifted. Something neither of us could ignore anymore.
The story kept snowballing, and the impact was already showing in the polls. In less than twenty-four hours, Fernando had dropped three points. It wasn’t catastrophic, but it was concerning.
“The opposition is gaining ground with this story,” the communications team warned, on high alert. “We need a statement.”
Fernando hated dealing with manufactured crises. He was a practical, direct man, and having to waste time debunking a lie infuriated him. But this was politics, and we knew we couldn’t let this fake news go unanswered.
That night, he would give a live interview.
I stayed backstage, watching every detail as he fielded the journalist’s sharp questions. He was impeccable. His voice firm, his gaze intense. But I knew him well enough to see the exhaustion, the barely contained anger, the frustration of fighting something that wasn’t even real.
And yet, he did it masterfully.
I admired him in that moment. Not just as the man I knew intimately, but as the leader who faced a war of narratives and refused to back down.
When the interview ended, he came straight to where I stood.
“How did I do?” he asked, his voice hoarse with exhaustion.
“Perfect,” I replied without hesitation.
For a moment, we just stood there, looking at each other. The desire was still there, simmering beneath the surface, tangled with the adrenaline of politics, the fear of the crisis, the intensity that seemed to grow stronger every day.
“I know I should go home,” he murmured, more to himself than to me.
“But you won’t.”
He let out a low, humorless laugh.
“You won’t either.”
He was right.
And that’s how we ended up at his apartment again, trying to convince ourselves it was just sex.
But deep down, we already knew it was much more than that.