They say love betrays itself inevitably, no matter how desperately one strives to conceal it.

Against the office windows—its corridors bathed in the pallid glow of evening lights—the rain had been drumming its dismal rhythm for hours. A relentless, heavy downpour, the sort children would call ‘mean’. A ‘mean rain’ that inexplicably brought thunderclaps and tempests in its wake.

—Daddy... when will the rain stop?

The small voice was barely audible, already drained of vitality—as though the deluge had siphoned away every trace of the boy’s joy.

The man at the desk, immersed in paperwork, paused mid-signature to glance at the window behind his chair.

—I don’t know, Kevin... Not for a while, I fear.

Had it not been for the emergency summons to the office, they might have spent this weekend at home, cocooned away from the storm. But as a senior executive, Joaquín was obliged to answer the call. And why? Ah, of course—Christian had once again prioritized his ‘more engaging pursuits’—namely, his parade of secretary-concubines—over even the most mundane responsibilities, though he was the office’s director. The director. And Joaquín’s friend. A friend Joaquín now found himself detesting for every petty transgression—if ‘petty’ could describe such rot. He loathed how this friendship forced him to suppress his own emotions, to avoid... her. Christian’s wife. A taboo. Joaquín could not love his friend’s wife. No. It was... wrong. He denied it, evaded it, buried the thoughts as if they didn’t exist—but... Kevin... his innocent, guileless son. Ah. The child had become an unwitting confessor, laying bare Joaquín’s heart. ‘Will Mrs. Miranda come today?’ ‘Can I bring Mrs. Miranda this candy?’

‘Look, I drew me, you, and Mrs. Miranda!’

God. Damn it all... Joaquín still kept that foolish little sketch tucked in his wallet, like some illicit lover’s portrait—a secret to be guarded unto death, never to fall into another’s hands. For even his son, it seemed, had begun to see in that woman someone... essential to his father.