Episode 2

The days cease to make sense.

The alarm clock rings, but it doesn't drag me out of bed; it's my body that moves, out of inertia. I get up, get dressed, take the transport to work. I walk among people as if I were made of smoke, invisible, a ghost trapped in a routine that weighs on me more than ever.

I enter the office and smile automatically when someone greets me. My fingers fly over the keyboard, fulfilling what they must fulfill, but my mind is not there. It never is. I return home at dusk and, as soon as I close the door behind me, the mask falls.

I collapse on the sofa or in bed and cry until my throat burns and my eyes throb as if they were about to burst. Crying has become my only refuge, my only relief, even if it leaves me empty, with swollen and tired skin.

My friends text me, call me, invite me to go out. I make up excuses for them again and again. I don't want them to see me like this, broken, destroyed, turned into a shadow of what I was. I don't want to hear their words of comfort because nothing can comfort me. No one can give me back what Stefan snatched away from me.

Sometimes, in the midst of silence, I plead. I cling to the pillow and beg like a child that all this is not real, that it has all been a nightmare, a bad dream from which I will wake up at any moment. I implore a God who I don't even know if he listens to me to give me back what I had, to give me back Stefan, the man who for three years I swore loved me.

But nothing changes. The house remains empty, the corners feel colder and the table in my small living room still reminds me of that night, with the melted candles and the food that no one ever tasted and that I ended up throwing away out of anger.

I repeat to myself again and again that everything was a cruel game, a twisted joke on the part of the man I trusted, and those words shatter me even more. Because if it was a game, then I was never loved. I was never enough.

I look in the mirror and barely recognize myself. My reflection is that of a broken woman, with her heart in tatters and her life stopped. A woman who still hopes, deep down, that he will come back and say that it was all a mistake.

The bed is the only thing that comforts me after work. The bread sticks in my throat and the peanut butter leaves my mouth pasty, but I still force myself to take another bite. It's the third sandwich of the night and I'm not hungry, just an emptiness that I try to fill in any way I can. I'm lying in bed, with my cell phone in my hand, aimlessly swiping across the screen. Silly memes, funny phrases… they get a brief chuckle out of me here and there, but it disappears right away. I don't really laugh, I can't.

I adjust the pillow behind my back, lick a bit of butter from my fingers and continue to slide my finger across the screen. Then, among the profile suggestions, an unknown one appears. A smiling girl, one of those who seem to live in an eternal spring. Out of simple curiosity I enter her profile.

There is a pinned, recent post. She showing an engagement ring, her eyes shining with emotion, and several more photos. I slide my finger… and I feel the world stop.

Part of the butter falls on my sheets when I am absorbed by what I see.

In the second photo, next to her, is Stefan.

My Stefan.

The cell phone trembles in my hands. I rub my eyes, thinking that maybe I'm confused, that it's someone who looks alike. But no. It's him. His wide smile, that dimple on his right cheek, his arm around the girl's waist as if she were a treasure.

My heart beats in my chest so hard that it almost leaves me breathless.

I read the description, feeling each word pierce my trachea.

"I'm happy to take this big step in our lives after a wonderful year together."

One year.

A damn year.

Tears blur my vision, but I keep looking, unable to take my eyes off those images that seem like a cruel mockery. He… he looks happy. Radiant. Like he once was with me.

A stifled scream escapes me. I squeeze the cell phone tightly. The pain and sadness that have consumed me these days suddenly transform into something darker, more seething. Rage.

Everything fits, every silence, every excuse, every distant look. He didn't just leave me. He cheated on me. For months, maybe for all this time, I was the other woman.

Shame burns me from the inside, but above all, hatred. I can't breathe, I can't think clearly, I just feel the fury growing and growing, filling me with a bitter energy.

His nervousness when we went out together on the street, his excuses to prefer staying at home, his reluctance to post photos together. It all fits, he didn't want to do any of that because his lies could be discovered.

The fury burns me from within, devouring me. I feel the blood hammering in my temples as I continue to swipe through the photos one after another, unable to stop. Each image is a direct hit to my chest: Stefan hugging her, Stefan kissing her forehead, Stefan looking at her as he once looked at me… or maybe he never did it with such devotion.

—Bastard!— I spit through my teeth, with a broken voice, while I squeeze the cell phone so hard that I fear breaking it in two.

He played with me. All this time. He made me believe that I was his future, that one day I would become his wife. And while I dreamed of white dresses and promises, he already had another life, another woman, another love.

No. I'm not going to allow it.

The pain turns into poison, into a dark energy that shakes me from head to toe. I don't want to cry anymore, I don't want to beg in the solitude of my room. I want Stefan to suffer, to pay for every tear I have shed for him, every night I spent thinking about a non-existent future. The time I wasted on him.

I keep sliding through the photos, with my heart burning, and then something stops me. An image captured at a party, full of laughter and raised glasses. Behind the radiant couple, in the background, a man catches my attention. Tall, elegant, imposing. With some white streaks in his hair, and eyes, as clear as steel that look straight at the camera although he seems not to have posed for it.

I recognize him immediately. The father of the ungrateful man I once called my boyfriend.

I had seen him before in several photographs on Stefan's phone, besides, a face like his would be impossible to forget. He is 45 years old and they have suited him like wine.

I can't help it and I remain motionless, holding my breath. It's him, no doubt. The man I had heard named so many times, whom I could never meet because he was always out of the country. And now, suddenly, there he is, in the background of a photo, as if fate were putting him in front of me.

An idea ignites in my mind, first like a flash, then like an unstoppable fire. If Stefan admires someone in this world, it is his father. He always mentioned him with respect, with pride, as if he were an example to follow and that is why I am clear.

The best way to get revenge on him will not be with shouts or reproaches, nor with tears. It will be by hitting him right where it hurts the most: in that blind pride he feels for his father.

Because if I achieve what I am thinking, if I manage to conquer the man he respects the most… then I will not only destroy him. I will humiliate him. And I will end up becoming something he never imagined.

His stepmother.

I smile for the first time in days and this smile tastes sweet to me. Sweet revenge.

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