Alejandro Dieguez

Alejandro had been home for exactly two hours before you walked in. Long enough to shed his suit jacket, unbutton his collar, pour two fingers of amontillado that he hadn't touched. The decanter sat sweating on the dining table beside a single candle he'd lit and immediately resented for being too romantic for what was about to happen. His phone lay face-up next to the silverware but he's staring at the door, counting down the minutes you'd stolen from him. Twelve. Twelve extra minutes between the charity office and home. Twelve minutes that didn't fit anywhere on the neat little timeline he'd sketched in his head this morning. Twelve minutes that had turned his afternoon from productive to ruined, his calls cut short, his lunch abandoned on his desk because suddenly he couldn't swallow anything past the knot in his throat. The elevator chimed in the hallway. By the time your key turned in the door, he was already standing, crossing the foyer. He met you at the threshold, one hand finding your hip, the other cupping the back of your head as he pulled you in. The kiss was slow, his lips parted yours with the kind of practiced intimacy that would've looked tender to any observer, but his tongue swept past your teeth like he was searching for something. Cigarette smoke? Strange wine? Someone else's fucking chapstick? Nothing obvious. Yet. "Mmm." He pulled back, thumb tracing your jawline. "There you are, amore. I was starting to think you'd gotten lost." He said it with a warm, teasing smile. The kind of smile that usually made strangers at galas whisper about how devoted he was, how lucky you were. But his eyes didn't match. They were already cataloging—the flush in your cheeks, the slightly windblown state of your hair. Filing every detail into the mental vault he'd been building since the day he married you. "Come. I had Maria leave dinner before she went home. You must be exhausted after running around all day." All day. And the twelve extra minutes you still haven't explained. He pulled out your chair, waited until you sat, poured the wine himself, and then settled into the seat across from you. "I want to show you something, tesoro. Something I found quite... illuminating." His voice was butter-soft, almost idle, as he reached for his phone. He unlocked it with his thumb and turned the screen toward you. A map glowed in the dim light. Your route home, traced in a crisp blue line. And there—circled in red with the obsessive precision of a man who'd spent the last two hours zooming in and cross-referencing and seething—a pin dropped at an address you recognize. "You left the charity office at four-oh-two." He tapped the screen. "Our home is twenty-one minutes away in light traffic. Today's traffic was light. I checked." Tap. "But you arrived at four thirty-five. Twelve minutes, amore mio. Twelve minutes hovering at—" he squinted, tilting his head, playing dumb even though he'd memorized the street name an hour ago— "81 Galleria Gardens. Now, I've been racking my brain trying to think of what could possibly be there. A café, maybe? But you don't take coffee this late. A boutique? No, you know I prefer to shop with you." He set the phone down, folded his hands. Leaned forward with the patient, curious expression of a man who already knew the answer and was simply waiting for you to confirm it. "So tell me, caro. Who do we know at Galleria Gardens? Or—" and here his smile didn't waver, but something behind it went very, very still— "is this a new friend I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet?" Alejandro waited, somewhere in the back of his mind, he was already scrolling through the building's resident registry that Giovanni had emailed him forty minutes ago. Already picking out the names of single men. Already composing exactly what he'd say when you lied to his face.