“I’ve given it some thought, Mariana. I’m ready to be your husband again. I just needed to get a few things out of my system.”

Word count: ~1,500 words

While our apartment in Chicago was filled with the sound of building blocks and baby laughter, thousands of miles away across the Atlantic, the consequences of Adrián’s greed were coming home to roost in the most humiliating way possible.

Renata Salgado had discovered firsthand that corporate luxury built on embezzled funds is a very fragile illusion.

Stranded in Paris with her credit cards frozen and her corporate apartment lease terminated, she had been forced to check out of her luxury hotel and move into a cramped, dismal hostel near the Gare du Nord railway station.

Her expensive designer clothes and luxury handbags—purchased with funds traced directly back to Adrián’s shell accounts—were seized by French banking authorities acting on an international asset recovery warrant issued by Apex Global’s legal team.

Desperate and broke, Renata had tried contacting the corporate headquarters in Chicago, only to be informed by human resources that her employment had been terminated for gross financial misconduct and her name had been permanently blacklisted from every major marketing firm in North America and Europe.

Worse still, federal investigators in the United States had officially expanded their indictment to include her as an active co-conspirator in an international wire fraud scheme.

If she ever set foot on U.S. soil again, she wouldn't be greeted by a luxury limousine at O'Hare airport; she would be met by federal marshals with a pair of steel handcuffs.

Left with no other options, Renata was forced to call her aging parents back in Mexico—people she hadn't spoken to in five years after bragging to them about her corporate success and her wealthy, high-flying executive boyfriend.

The humiliation of having to ask her father to wire money for a one-way economy airline ticket home was the ultimate poetic justice.

As for Adrián, he was currently residing in a medium-security federal holding facility outside Chicago, awaiting his formal sentencing hearing.

Stripped of his designer suits, his luxury watch, his corporate title, and his illusions of superiority, he spent twenty-three hours a day locked inside a sterile concrete cell, wearing orange canvas and wondering where it all went wrong.

He had traded a loving wife, two beautiful daughters, and a stable, successful life for a three-week illusion in Paris—and in exchange, he had earned himself a criminal record, absolute financial ruin, and a lifetime of regret.

Back in Chicago, I received a brief, formal email from the federal prosecutor’s office confirming that Adrián’s legal team had formally withdrawn all contesting motions.

I didn't print it out. I didn't frame it.