The worst part is that she really believed she deserved the same things I had, but without the effort. It was as if success was a matter of luck or favoritism, not hard work and sacrifice. Beatrice studied graphic design at a public university, graduated without much distinction, and since then jumped from job to job, always complaining that bosses didn’t recognize her potential.
Our parents always tried to balance things out. When I bought my new Honda Civic, they bought a used one for her too. When I started earning well, they increased the help they gave her to pay rent for a small apartment in downtown San Antonio. It was as if they were trying to compensate for my success by keeping Beatrice at the same level, artificially.
She always asked about my salary, my investments, and the apartment’s value. «Just sisterly curiosity,» she’d say. But there was an intensity in the way she asked that bothered me. Now I understood it wasn’t curiosity; it was pure envy mixed with greed that I had refused to see.
When I met David at a work party five years ago, Beatrice made sure to say he wasn’t my type. He was handsome, nice, and worked as a salesman at a BMW dealership. He earned reasonably well by Texas standards, about $5,000 a month with commissions, but nothing compared to my $8,000 salary that soon became $12,000.
Still, I fell in love. He was fun, affectionate, and made me laugh after stressful days at the office. David had a simplicity that attracted me, an uncomplicated way of seeing life that contrasted with my nature of always planning three steps ahead.
Beatrice was always polite to David, but I noticed a certain tension, especially when we all went out together and the bill arrived. David sometimes felt embarrassed when I paid for restaurants that cost $100 per person or when we bought concert tickets that cost $200 each. Beatrice observed all this with that calculating look I knew well but preferred to ignore.
«You support him, don’t you?» she asked once when David went to the bathroom during a family lunch at Olive Garden.
«I don’t support him,» I replied, irritated. «We split things proportionally to our income.»
It was true. David paid the bills he could—groceries, gas, some household bills—and I covered the rest. It worked for us. But for Beatrice, that was more proof that I had too much luck: a brilliant career, a beautiful two-bedroom apartment in Austin, a dedicated husband, and investments that grew month by month, as if I hadn’t fought for every achievement, as if everything had fallen from the sky.
I got home, and the apartment was exactly as I had left it that morning: bed made, dishes washed, everything in place. It was strange how life could completely fall apart and things could remain exactly the same. David’s toothbrush was still there in the bathroom, his clothes in the closet, that ridiculous Dallas Cowboys mug he’d gotten in a dealership promotion.
I sat on the beige leather sofa in the living room, still in my dress and high heels, and stared into the void. My head was strangely quiet, as if my brain had shut down the emotion processing system. I knew I should be crying, screaming, breaking things, but all I felt was a kind of numbness, like when you hit your elbow and can’t feel your arm for a few minutes.
David didn’t come home that night, obviously. At two in the morning, I received a message: «I’m at B’s house. We’ll talk tomorrow.» B. He called my sister B, as if they’d been intimate for years, as if I didn’t exist, as if our four years of marriage were just an inconvenient obstacle that had finally been removed.
I spent the night awake, walking through the 120 square meters of the apartment, trying to understand how I had gotten there. How hadn’t I noticed the signs? Were there signs? David working later in recent weeks, Beatrice asking about my schedule whenever she called, both of them arriving together at the restaurant as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Now that I thought about it, Beatrice had appeared in Austin a lot in recent months. «I came to see some clients,» she’d say. Beatrice worked as a freelance graphic designer, so it was plausible that she had projects in the city. But Austin was only an hour and a half from San Antonio. Why did she always stay in hotels? Why didn’t she ever ask to sleep on my couch like she used to?
When the sun rose, I was still on the couch, with my dress wrinkled and makeup smeared. My iPhone showed 17 missed calls from my mother. Beatrice had told her everything, probably in a romanticized version where they were two lovers who couldn’t resist the cruel fate that made them meet through me.
I called the office and said I wouldn’t be coming to work. Simone, my assistant, noticed something was wrong from the tone of my voice but didn’t insist. «Call me if you need anything, Marina. You never miss work. It must be something important.» She was one of the few people I could trust completely.
I went to take a shower, trying to wash away the sticky feeling from that night. Under the hot water, I finally cried—not dramatic movie tears, but the tired crying of someone who had just lost two important people at once. My sister and my husband, the two I loved most in the world, had betrayed me in the cruelest way possible.
When I got out of the shower, I had three messages from Beatrice. «Mari, we need to talk.» «It wasn’t how we wanted you to find out. Call me, please.» «I know it’s difficult, but we can resolve this like adults.» I deleted them all without responding.
For the first time in years, I spent the entire day doing absolutely nothing productive. I watched Netflix, ordered Chinese food that cost $40 and arrived cold, and ignored the phone that rang every two hours. It was as if I needed a whole day to process the fact that my life had completely changed overnight.
That evening, David showed up to get some clothes. He still had the keys, still felt entitled to enter the apartment I had bought alone as if nothing had happened. He tried to talk, explain, and justify himself while packing a suitcase with his things. «It wasn’t planned, Mari. It just happened,» as if betrayal were a meteorological accident, something beyond human control. «B was going through a difficult time and needed someone to talk to.»
«How long have you been together?» I asked, watching him fold the polo shirts I had bought for him at Nordstrom.
«Officially, since January. Four months.» Four months of lies. Fake kisses. Empty «I love yous» before sleep. While I worked 60 hours a week to get the promotion, dreaming of our future together, he was building a new life with my sister.
«I’m going to find a lawyer,» I warned, sitting on the king-size bed I had bought the year before.
David stopped packing his suitcase and looked at me for the first time since he arrived. «Mari, it doesn’t have to be like this. We can resolve everything among ourselves civilly. Divide things fairly, without complications.»
Civilly. Divide things fairly. As if betrayal were an issue that could be resolved with politeness and goodwill. As if he had any right to what I had built.
After he left, taking two suitcases and promising to come back on the weekend to get the rest, I called Helena, my best friend since college and a family law attorney in Houston. I told her everything, trying to keep my voice steady. Helena listened to me in silence, and when I finished, she sighed deeply.
«Marina, I’m so sorry. I know how much you loved him and trusted your sister.» She paused. «About the divorce, I need you to bring all the marriage documents, bank statements, deeds, proof of income, investments, everything. I’ll put together the best case possible for you.»
«Helena, I don’t care about the money. I just want this to end quickly.»
«Don’t say that, Marina. You fought hard to build what you have. You’re not going to hand it over to someone who betrayed you. Do you have any idea how much your assets are worth today?»
I didn’t have an exact idea, but I knew it was substantial. The apartment was worth at least $400,000. I had about a hundred thousand in investments and a stake in a startup worth at least $50,000. Plus, the new salary of $16,000 monthly. I scheduled the meeting for the following week and hung up.
That’s when I remembered I needed to organize all the important documents. It wasn’t something I did regularly. Who thinks about divorce when they’re happy in marriage? I went to the office I had set up in the second bedroom of the apartment, where I kept everything organized in colored folders, like a person obsessed with control.
Bank statements from the last two years. Tax returns, investment statements from Fidelity and Charles Schwab. It was impressive to see on paper everything I had achieved at 29. I was proud of what I had built, but now everything seemed so fragile, as if it could disappear because of a betrayal and a poorly conducted divorce process.
I took the green folder where I kept the marriage documents. Birth certificate. Marriage certificate from Travis County. Contract for… I stopped with the marriage certificate in my hand, frowning. There was something written there about the property regime that suddenly caught my attention: complete separation of assets. Why complete separation? Most couples in Texas chose community property.
That’s when I remembered vaguely, like a memory stored in a dusty drawer of my brain: a prenuptial agreement. I had insisted on making a prenuptial agreement four years ago. I ran to the small safe I had installed in the bedroom closet. It had been so long since I’d opened it that I almost forgot the combination: my birthday inverted. Inside, between the apartment deed and my passport, there it was. A sealed envelope with the seals of the Travis County Clerk’s Office. Prenuptial Agreement: Marina Santos Silva and David Olivera Ferreira.
My hands trembled as I opened the envelope. I vaguely remembered insisting on this at the time, but the details were hazy. It had been four years ago, and I was so in love and happy that the legal aspects of marriage seemed like just a necessary formality to officialize our love. But now, alone in the bedroom at two in the morning, holding those pages printed on letterhead from the law firm, I felt something I hadn’t experienced in days: a hint of hope.
Maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t lose everything I had built. Maybe there was something in those papers that could protect me from my sister’s greed and my husband’s irresponsibility. I took a deep breath, turned on the bedside lamp, and began reading every word with the attention of someone deciphering their own future.
The memory came back like a movie being rewound. It was a sunny Saturday in April, two weeks before our wedding. I was 25 and had just signed the purchase contract for my first apartment, a modern two-bedroom loft in downtown Austin that cost $350,000. David was nervous about the ceremony preparations, complaining about costs that were getting out of control.
«Mari, are you sure you need all this?» he said, looking at the vendor list spread on my kitchen table. «Fifteen thousand for catering, eight thousand for a photographer, twelve thousand for decorations. It’s a lot of money.»
It was a lot of money indeed, especially for him, who earned about $4,000 a month at the BMW dealership. For me, who had just received a substantial promotion and was earning $12,000 monthly, it was an investment in our special day. But I understood his concern; he had grown up in a family where every dollar was counted.
«David, relax,» I said. «I’ll pay most of it. You contribute what you can. What’s important is us being together, celebrating our love.»
