When he fired me, he didn’t even blink: “You’re useless now. I’m not going to support you.” That night he threw me out with a suitcase and a silence that hurt more than the cold. I cried on the street… until I found a hidden folder with his name and an impossible figure. “What is this?” I whispered. Months later, when he saw me again, he turned pale: “You… you can’t be her.” I smiled. He still has no idea what I discovered.
My name is Lucía Martín, and until three months ago my life seemed steady: a permanent job at a logistics company in Madrid, a shared mortgage, and a husband, Javier Ortega, who liked to boast about “taking care of his own.” The day I was laid off, my boss barely looked up. “Budget cuts. It’s not personal.” I went home with trembling hands and a tight knot in my throat, hoping at least for a hug.
Javier didn’t even give me that. He stood in the doorway, phone in hand, as if I were nothing more than an annoying notification.
“And now what?” he spat.
“I’ll find something else. I just need a little time,” I said, trying to sound steady.
He let out a short, cold laugh.
“Time? No. What you don’t have anymore is usefulness. ‘You’re useless now. I’m not going to support you.’”
The words hit harder than losing my job. I told myself it was just an argument, a bad moment… until he opened the hall closet and threw an empty suitcase onto the floor.
“You’re leaving today. Take your things. The rest… is mine.”
My mouth went dry.
“Javier, it’s our house.”
“It was. I pay most of it, remember?” he shrugged. “And I’m not carrying a dead weight.”
That night I left with one suitcase and a bag of clothes. Outside, the air smelled like rain and humiliation. I wandered aimlessly to a friend’s building, but I didn’t have the courage to knock. I sat on a bench and cried until my makeup smeared across my fingers. When I reached into my bag for a tissue, I found something strange: a black envelope that wasn’t mine, labeled “Ortega — Confidential.”
My hands shook as I opened it. Inside were copies of bank transfers, printed emails, and a number that froze me in place: €247,000. My heart pounded when I saw the subject line of one email: “Authorization signed by L. Martín.”
“That… that can’t be,” I whispered.
I kept turning the pages. Then I saw my name on a document I had never signed, bearing a signature identical to mine. In that moment, a shadow stopped in front of me and a voice cut through the night air:
“Lucía… what are you doing with that?”
PART 2
I looked up and saw Javier. There was no surprise on his face—only calculation. He glanced at the envelope, then at me, as if confirming the bait had worked.
“Did you follow me?” I managed to say.
“That’s not the real question,” he replied, lowering his voice. “Do you even know what you’re holding?”
I clutched the papers to my chest.
“I know there are transfers in your name and an ‘authorization’ with my signature. That’s forgery.”
Javier sighed, almost patiently.
“Lucía, don’t be dramatic. It’s business. Grown-up matters.”
I stood up, shaking with anger.
“Don’t talk to me like that. Why is my name on this? Why that amount?”
He smiled, without warmth.
“Because you worked there. You had access. It was… convenient.”
The word “convenient” froze my blood. Suddenly everything made sense: my dismissal, his rush to throw me out, the envelope “forgotten” among my things. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a trap.
“Are you blaming me?” I asked, my throat tight.
“I’m not blaming anyone. I’m just explaining how the world works. If this comes out, the name on those documents is yours. And you know… a fraud charge doesn’t just disappear.”
A wave of dizziness hit me. I tightened my grip on the envelope.
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’m practical.” He stepped closer. “Give that back and I’ll leave you alone. You could start over… somewhere far away.”
I stepped back.
“And if I don’t?”
Javier glanced at his phone and turned it on.
“Then tomorrow you’ll have a visitor.”
I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed on my friend Marta Salazar’s couch, and her eyes burned when I told her everything.
“This is serious, Lucía. You can’t handle this alone.”
“I don’t have money, I don’t have a home, I don’t have anything,” I said. “But I have this.”
The next morning I went to a lawyer Marta recommended, Inés Pardo. She reviewed the documents without flinching.
“They used your identity to authorize transactions,” she concluded. “And the worst part? They look real. But there’s always a trail.”
She asked me to recall every password, every login, every email account. I had worked in administration; Javier had insisted for years on “helping” me with my computer. “Let me fix it.” And I, naïve, had given him my trust—and my passwords.
Inés was direct:
“If he plans to pin this on you, we move first. Banks, registries, IP tracking, backups. And most importantly: we prove motive.”
When I left her office, my phone buzzed. A message from Javier: “Last chance. Be reasonable.” I looked at it, took a deep breath, and replied with just one sentence: “Let’s talk. I want to understand everything.”
It wasn’t surrender. It was the start of my counterattack.
PART 3
We met at a café downtown, surrounded by cameras and people. Inés had told me, “Smile, listen, and get him to talk.” I had my phone recording, my hands steady, my voice controlled.
Javier arrived immaculate—pressed shirt, the same expensive cologne. He sat down as if nothing had happened.
“I knew you’d come to your senses,” he said.
“I just want the truth,” I replied, meeting his eyes. “When did you start using my name?”
His jaw tightened for a split second.
“Don’t put it like that. It sounds ugly.”
“Ugly?” I smiled, though inside I was burning. “I lost my job, you threw me out, and now there are documents with my signature.”
Javier took a sip of coffee and, as casually as if discussing a bill, said,
“I needed a ‘clean profile’ to move money without raising suspicion. Yours was perfect. And if everything blew up… well, you were already out of the company.”
The words hit like a punch to the chest, but I kept my tone even.
“And you were going to let me take the fall?”
“Lucía, don’t dramatize. I would have given you something to disappear.”
That’s when I understood: to him, I was a temporary solution, not a person. I asked him to explain everything “for closure,” and he kept talking, convinced he was untouchable. He mentioned emails, logins, a bridge account, even the name of a bank contact. Every sentence was another nail in his own coffin.
Two days later, Inés filed the complaint along with the recording and requested investigative measures: access logs, linked devices, bank transactions. The bank confirmed something crucial: several operations had been authorized from an IP address tied to Javier’s office network and from his corporate laptop. Even worse, evidence showed he had attempted to open an account in my name using a digital signature generated from his phone.
When he was summoned, Javier tried his usual script: “Lucía is resentful.” But I was no longer alone or afraid. At the preliminary hearing, I looked at him and said clearly,
“I don’t want revenge. I want justice.”
Javier couldn’t hold my gaze. For the first time, I saw real fear in his face. And that’s when I realized my “nothing” had been a lie: I still had my voice, my evidence, my dignity.
Today I live in a small apartment—yes—but it’s mine. I work at another company, and every time someone tries to diminish me, I remember that phrase: “You’re useless now.” I smile, because now I know who really wasn’t worth anything.
And you, reading this: what would you have done in my place? Would you have stayed silent out of fear, or reported it even if they called you “dramatic”? If you’d like, tell me in the comments whether you think Javier deserves a second chance—or if some things simply can’t be forgiven. I’m listening.