Chapter 28 - The Broken Man
Diego was living in a nightmare of his own making.
He resided in a damp, windowless basement room in a dangerous neighborhood, surrounded by empty bottles of cheap liquor. He had lost the house, he had lost his mother to the prison system, and he had lost the one woman who had ever truly loved him.
He sat on a stained mattress, staring blankly at the peeling wallpaper.
He realized, in the agonizing clarity of his drunken stupor, the monumental scale of what he had thrown away. He had been married to the sole heiress of a multi-billion dollar empire. If he had simply been a good man, if he had protected her, he would be living in a palace right now, holding his son, surrounded by unimaginable wealth and respect.
Instead, he had chosen to use her as a maid to appease his narcissistic mother.
"I am a fool,"
Diego sobbed, throwing a glass bottle against the concrete wall, shattering it into a hundred pieces.
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He had nothing left. His phone rang constantly with threats from debt collectors. He was hungry, he was terrified, and he was completely alone.
Desperation, fueled by cheap alcohol and a pathetic refusal to accept his complete defeat, began to boil in his chest. He convinced himself that if he could just see Valeria, if he could just look into her eyes and beg for forgiveness, she would remember the girl she used to be and save him from this hell.
