“You haven’t achieved anything,” my husband used to tell me. But he didn’t know his new CEO was my son from a previous marriage…
“The shirt! White! Could you really not have guessed?”
Rodolfo’s voice cut through the morning silence like a sharp b:lade.
He stood in the middle of the living room, furiously adjusting the knot of his most expensive tie, looking at me as if I were a mindless maid.
“Today they’re introducing the new CEO. I have to look like a man of millions.”
Without a word, I handed him the hanger with an impeccably ironed white shirt. He snatched it from my hands as if I were stealing his precious time. Rodolfo was nervous, and in those moments, he became a mixture of venom and passive-aggressiveness.
“They say the newcomer is a kid. And yet, he’s already the CEO. His last name is De la Vega.”
My fingers lingered for a moment on the coffee pot handle. De la Vega. My first husband’s surname. My son’s surname.
“You can’t understand,” Rodolfo continued, contemplating his own reflection in the mirrored closet doors. “You’re just a mother hen, always at home, in your comfortable pond. You’ve never dreamed of achieving anything.”
He adjusted his tie with a satisfied smile, a grimace directed not at me, but at that “successful man” in the mirror, whom he had been sculpting for years.
Then I remembered another morning, many years ago. I, with my eyes swollen from crying, with little Adrián in my arms, and my first husband, Esteban, helplessly muttering that he had nothing and couldn’t support us.
In that rented studio in a working-class neighborhood of Madrid, with the dripping faucet, I made a decision: my son would go far.
I worked two, sometimes three, jobs. At first, when Adrián was in kindergarten, then at school. I fell asleep on his notebooks, and later, on my own college notes. I sold the only thing I owned—the apartment I inherited from my grandmother—so he could go on that scholarship to Silicon Valley.
He was the project of my life. My most valuable startup, my most important investment.
“They say he’s the son of a simple engineer,” Rodolfo continued, savoring the details like a gourmet. “Do you realize? From nothing to the top. And those are usually the most ruthless. You have to show him from the start who’s in charge here.”
I remembered how, at a company party, Rodolfo—already drunk—publicly humiliated Esteban. Esteban had come with a project, and Rodolfo called him a “dreamer with empty pockets,” laughing uproariously. Those kinds of moments fueled his outsized ego.
“Bring me the shoe polish. And the cream.” Quickly.
I brought him everything he asked for. My hands weren’t shaking. Inside me, absolute silence reigned.
Rodolfo didn’t know that his new boss wasn’t just any “De la Vega.”
He didn’t suspect that this “kid” was the co-founder of a technology company his group had recently bought for a fortune, naming him CEO of an entire division.
And he also didn’t know that this “upstart” remembered very well the man who had made his mother cry on her pillow.
He left, as always, slamming the door.
I was left alone. I went to the window and watched his car drive away.
That day Rodolfo was going to the most important meeting of his life. But he didn’t know that, in reality, he was marching to his own g:a:llows.
That night, the door slammed against the wall as if it had been kicked down. Rodolfo burst into the hall. His face was red, and his expensive tie hung around his neck like a noose he’d just freed himself from.
“I hate him!” he hissed, throwing the briefcase into a corner.
“Can you imagine what that brat has allowed himself to do?…”
“That… Adrián Torres had the nerve to contradict me in front of the entire council. He made me look like a complete novice! And they all laughed…”
I looked at him in silence.
Inside me, there was no more fear or resentment. Only absolute cold, as sharp as a razor.
I remembered all those nights in Madrid, when I would come home exhausted from two or three jobs at once, just so my son could eat and study.
I remembered his determined gaze when he left for Barcelona to get his education, promising me that he would succeed.
“Maybe because he’s better than you,” I said softly, in a voice I didn’t even recognize as my own.
Rodolfo raised his head, surprised. I’d never dared to answer him like that.
“What did you say?”
“That my son is what you’ll never be: a man who has earned every step through honest effort.”
Silence filled the room. Only the ticking of the clock could be heard in the living room.
Rodolfo let out a short, sarcastic laugh, but panic lurked beneath it.
“Your son? That upstart who thinks he owns the world…”
“No,” I replied calmly. “He doesn’t believe it. He knows nothing is free. And he also knows who humiliated his father and who trampled on his mother for years.”
I saw his face redden and his fists clench. But for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel afraid. In that instant, I understood that the chain that bound me to him had been broken forever.
“He’ll be the one to destroy you, Rodolfo,” I murmured calmly. “And I won’t lift a single finger to save you.”
He remained silent, unable to answer. A chasm opened between us, greater than all the arguments and all the past humiliations. The chasm of the end.
That night, when he fell asleep on the couch with the bottle of whiskey beside him, I began to pack my things.
I didn’t need much: some clothes, a few photos and mementos. My life was no longer there.
The next morning, when he woke up and saw the empty closets, only a brief note was waiting for him on the nightstand:
“I have achieved nothing, but I have raised a man who now rules your world. You no longer have power over me. Goodbye.”
I left the apartment with my back straight and my steps light. For the first time in many years, the morning air in the streets of Seville felt clean, and the sky clear.
Behind me, the empire of arrogance was crumbling. Ahead of me, a new life was beginning.
