Perfect opportunity

Ethan

Mariana smiles, and her laughter is filled with irony and, I would say, exhaustion. But I was also tired of so many injustices. Someone needs to take control.

"Have you ever stopped to think that things might not be as you believe?" Mariana says, and her finger now touches my chest several times as she speaks right in my face. "Have you ever thought that maybe... just maybe... Beatriz wasn't the person you idealized in your infatuated mind? Have you ever considered listening to what Murilo might have to say about all this?"

"Ah! Now I understand everything," I step away from her now. "You rushed to tell your little friend about what I told you, and he, of course, poisoned you against me, and you chose to believe him!"

Mariana doesn't respond to me. Instead, she does what I hate the most and turns her back on me for the second time that afternoon, heading towards the door.

"You don't like it when I talk about your friends? Well, I don't like it when people judge Beatriz, especially when she's not even here to defend herself!"

She stops, holding onto the doorknob, and the anger she showed just a few seconds ago seems to have left her, leaving only sadness behind.

"This can be easily resolved, Ethan," she says. "You just need to ask your great friend, your beloved's brother, how things actually happened. I haven't heard his side, but I'm sure he can clarify many things for you. It's just a piece of advice."

Mariana touched a sensitive spot. I couldn't accept that they were using Beatriz's name in such a way, with malicious insinuations about a fragile and gentle girl who had always been honest in her actions and demeanor. And my first reaction is to hurt, just as I felt hurt now.

"I'm not looking for advice, especially not from someone who goes to a cheap nightclub to sell their virginity for a pittance.

The speed with which Mariana approached me made me certain that she intended to repeat the slap she gave me when we first met, but this time I was prepared, and before her hand reached my face, I was already ready to grab her arm.

But when she stood in front of me, her expression was filled with disgust.

"Thought I was going to hit you?" she asked, her voice dripping with contempt. "I won't do that. In fact, you will never have the privilege of feeling my hand touch you again, not even if it were to mistreat you. I never want to have any contact with you ever again, Ethan Constantino."

She walked to the door once again, and this time she opened it without hesitation.

The realization that I had gone too far hit me like a rug being pulled from under my feet, and the feeling of emptiness that engulfed me was truly unprecedented.

"You know you can't do that," I tried to prevent the definitive end. "You and your friend are in my hands."

"As I said before, right here in this very room... go ahead, Ethan. To publish the auction in all the newspapers," she said dismissively. "Anything is better than being forced to live with someone as lacking in character and vindictive as you."

After uttering those harsh words, filled with freezing coldness, Mariana left without even looking back.

I put my hand to my face, feeling terrible.

What have I done!? I had lost her.

I sat on the couch, hands covering my face, fully aware that I had just committed a huge stupidity. Perhaps the biggest stupidity of my entire life. But it was too difficult to control my anger when Mariana touched such a sensitive subject.

She didn't know Beatriz like I did. She knew nothing about her! How could Mariana simply open her mouth and try to tarnish the name of the girl I had known since we were children? I lost control and was completely consumed by rage.

I didn't notice the door being opened, but I felt Liz's slow and hesitant footsteps, and I took a deep breath, trying to control the wave of emotions that was tormenting me at that moment.

"What have you done, Ethan?" Liz asked.

"Is it so obvious that it was my fault?"

"I don't know Mariana, but the way she left this room shows that she was devastated," Liz said sorrowfully. "And I know you well enough to say that you are just as devastated, if not more."

Liz knows the whole story. She was studying with me while I was dating Beatriz, but I never explicitly told my friend and secretary about my plans for revenge against Murilo Fernandes because I knew she wouldn't agree and would try to dissuade me from that idea.

Now, however, I wanted to hear her opinion. I needed to talk to someone. I needed to hear that I was right. That the way Murilo had used Beatriz was cruel and led her straight to her tragic fate. And that's why I ended up confiding in Liz at that moment.

Liz listened attentively, sitting beside me and not saying anything until I finished the whole story, only then speaking with great wisdom, actually.

"You've heard everything you just told me," she said, touching my shoulder in a comforting gesture. "You know what you did and whether it was right or wrong. Now, tell me honestly, do you believe it solved anything? Nothing will bring Beatriz back."I can't accept that Murilo is happy, being with the one he loves, when he took that right away from Beatriz!"

"It was an accident, Ethan," Liz says in a gentle tone. "An accident... And both Murilo and you deserve to be happy."

Mariana

I left Ethan's office fuming, as Aunt Celina would say, but that's exactly how I felt at that moment—truly boiling with anger, bubbling even. Despite my terribly swollen face, I had left my house to personally go to Ethan's company, after searching for the correct address on Google, with the sole intention of telling him face-to-face what I thought about him sending an unwanted gift to my house without my consent.

Recalling the moment when they arrived at my house with a bed to deliver, on Ethan Constantino's orders, reignites all my fury. The audacity of that wretched cretin to try to control even the bed I sleep on in my own room. The room is mine, the house is mine, and he has no right to meddle in matters that have nothing to do with him. I would never accept someone who interfered in my life in that way, without any prior conversation, without any dialogue, just doing whatever they want, however, they please.