He was seated at the main table of Luzes, the most exclusive and elitist restaurant in the São Raimundo neighborhood of Manaus. Around him, three real estate executives anxiously awaited his signature to seal a forty million reais transaction. Everything seemed perfectly meticulously crafted on that humid night in the Amazonian capital. João’s navy blue suit was impeccable, custom-made by renowned tailors and worn without a tie to project the absolute power of a thirty-two-year-old man who had conquered the city with an iron fist and an implacable strategic vision.His posture was that of a king dominating his territory. He was the man who always won, the businessman who had overcome the greatest humiliation of his personal life to become an untouchable urban legend in northern Brazil. His gaze, usually cold and calculating, shifted for only a second from the paper resting on the white linen tablecloth.
And it was at that exact moment that he saw her. The impact was so violent that the oxygen seemed to be sucked from his lungs all at once. It was like colliding with a concrete wall at two hundred kilometers per hour.About fifteen meters away, in the less illuminated area of the luxurious hall, a woman was cleaning a table. The contrast was almost grotesque, a visual affront to the elegance of the environment. Amidst the golden tones of the decor, imported marbles, and fine crystals, that woman wore a garish orange cleaning uniform, made of cheap and visibly worn fabric, with grimy white collars. She was completely out of place in that world of wealth. But it wasn’t the uniform that paralyzed João Gouveia. It was her. Valéria Mendes. His ex-wife.
The pen slipped from João’s fingers and hit the glass table with a dry snap, staining the million-dollar document with a thick drop of black ink. One of the executives, noticing the sudden change, frowned and asked if everything was alright. João didn’t answer. He didn’t blink, he barely breathed. His dark eyes were fixed on that woman in the distance. His mind, trained to process complex numbers and market strategies in fractions of a second, collapsed before the irrational image presented to him.
