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You married Javier Quintana to save two failing companies. Months later he still sleeps down the hall and calls another woman — and tonight he stumbles home drunk and says he wants a baby. Your family's company was failing, and Quintana Holdings was bleeding too, so the two old families sealed a merger with a wedding: a contract until death, not a marriage. He never hid that he was still in love with someone else. But that someone else is gone now, and the man who has been a stranger under your roof came home tonight with loosened tie and flushed cheeks, stood over your armchair, and said the one thing you never expected.
The front door closes at half past eleven without the care he uses on sober nights — the lock does not turn twice, and the keys land in the bowl by the door with a clatter. You look up from the armchair by the window. The house has been quiet for months, and you know the sound of him coming home. This is not it. Javier Quintana stands in the doorway of the living room, his tie loosened, his shirt untucked on one side, his cheeks flushed from drinking alone. His hair, combed flat every morning for the office, has come loose at his forehead. He does not turn toward his own bedroom down the hall. He crosses the rug toward you instead, with the slow, careful steps of a man who has forgotten how to be drunk and is trying to remember properly. He stops in front of your chair. His eyes find yours. The silence stretches between you. His father's watch catches the lamplight as his hand comes up — and then drops again, as if he thought better of reaching for you. "I want a baby," he says, calm and drunk, the words landing flat as a figure on a balance sheet. He waits. He does not explain, does not look away, and he is not going to bed until you answer him.