Killed by My Wife, Reborn as Her Nightmare

THE GIFT

CHAPTER 4:

The thirty dollars felt like a burning coal in Adrian’s pocket. He hadn’t cashed the insult of a cheque.

He’d walked instead to a quiet, clean-looking café he had passed a hundred times but could never afford, and spent half of it on a single meal: chilaquiles en salsa verde, Elena’s favorite from their early days, packed carefully in a white cardboard container.

It was a fool’s errand. A final, fragile string of hope he was clinging to as he made the long walk to Valencia Tower, that if she saw this, if she tasted this memory, she might remember the man he used to be, not the ghost he had become.

The Valencia tower, was a sleek spear of glass and steel, stabbed at the Mexico City sky.

It bore her family’s name. He’d never been inside. He wasn’t welcome in the places where she was real.

But in his hand, he held the warm weight of the container, a last offering before the altar of her indifference.

Every step was a prayer. Every ragged breath behind his cannula was a plea. For her to see him and remember him.

Pushing through the revolving doors felt like crossing into a foreign country.

The lobby was a cathedral of cold marble and sharper glances. The receptionist, a woman with frosty blonde hair and a smile that never reached her eyes, looked up as he approached.

“Deliveries use the service elevator,” she said, her gaze already dropping back to her screen.

“I’m here to see my wife. Elena Valencia.”

The woman’s eyes flicked back up, a slow, reassessing scan that took in his worn shoes, the faint stain on his trousers, the telltale plastic tube tracing from his nose to the small tank he carried.

Her painted lips thinned. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Please. Just tell her Adrian is here.”

She sighed, as if burdened by a great inconvenience, and pressed a button on her intercom. “Señora Valencia? There’s a… gentleman here to see you. An Adrian?” A pause. Her eyes widened slightly. “Yes, of course. Right away.”

She pointed a manicured nail toward a bank of elevators. “Penthouse suite. She’s… expecting you.”

The words should have been a warning. But Adrian was a man clutching at the last fraying threads of hope.

He stepped into the elevator, the doors sighing shut like the closing of a tomb.

The ascent was silent. His reflection in the polished brass doors was a pale, gaunt ghost. A man already half-erased.

The doors opened directly into her office anteroom, a space of minimalist art, a single orchid, and absolute silence. Elena’s assistant’s desk was empty.

And then he heard it.

A sound he knew too well. A low, rhythmic groan. Not of pain. But of pleasure.

It came from behind the heavy, oak door to her private office. It was muffled, but unmistakable, punctuated by the sharp, urgent creak of furniture.

His feet carried him forward, a moth drawn to the flame of its own destruction. The door was slightly ajar. A sliver of light, of movement.

He pushed it open.

The scene inside was not meant for him. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a dizzying view of the city, but the only view that mattered was the one on the imported silk rug.

Elena, her blouse undone, was bent over her chrome-and-glass desk. Behind her, moving with a possessive, athletic rhythm, was Diego Navarro.

Adrian didn’t speak. The air left his lungs in a silent rush.

It was Diego who saw him first. He didn’t stop. He simply turned his head, met Adrian’s eyes, and smiled. A cold, victorious slash of white in the dim room.

Elena, sensing the shift, glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes, dark with passion a second before, frosted over instantly. Not with shame. With sheer, unadulterated fury.

“Get out,” she hissed.

The spell broke. A red-hot wire of something that was not grief, not pain, but pure, undiluted rage, snapped inside Adrian.

He lunged forward, not at her, but at Diego. His hands, weak from illness, found the man’s shoulder and yanked.

“Get off her!”

Diego stumbled back, his composure cracking for a single second into startled annoyance. He righted himself, adjusting his trousers with a chilling calm.

Elena whirled, yanking her blouse closed. “How dare you!”

“How dare I?” Adrian’s voice was a raw, broken thing. “He’s… you’re… in your office!”

“It’s my office!” she screamed, the sound shattering the quiet. “My company! My life! You are nothing here! You are a stain!”

Diego had retrieved his suit jacket. He slipped it on, his movements smooth, unruffled.

He looked at Adrian as one would look at an insect that had crawled onto a wedding cake. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Security arrived then, two burly men who didn’t ask questions. They seized Adrian by his arms. The oxygen tank was knocked from his hand, clattering across the floor, the hose ripped from his nose.

“Throw him out,” Elena commanded, her voice now glacial, controlled. “And make sure every guard in the building knows his face. He is never to set foot in Valencia Tower again.”

They dragged him, choking, past the now-open door, past a bullpen of employees who had gathered, their faces a mixture of horror and morbid fascination.

The walk of shame through the gleaming lobby felt miles long. They didn’t just escort him out; they propelled him through the revolving doors with a final, contemptuous shove.

He landed on the sun-hardened concrete sidewalk, the impact jarring his bones. His tank rolled to a stop in the gutter.

As he pushed himself up, dizzy and gasping, he heard the click of heels on marble.

Elena stood just inside the glass, a silhouette of perfect, untouchable cruelty. She held up her phone, pointed it at him, and took a picture.

The message was clear. This is what you are. A meme. A joke. A man on the ground.

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Adrian walked. He didn't know where. The city was a blur of noise and light that he moved through like a phantom, the vision of the office playing on a loop behind his eyes.

The chill of the polished floor, the heat of their bodies, the cold victory in Diego's smile. It replayed with every heartbeat, a sickening film he couldn't stop.

He walked past closed shops and open bars, past couples laughing and street vendors calling out. He was invisible, a walking wound.

The chilaquiles he’d bought with his last shred of foolish hope were gone, discarded in a bin outside the tower. His last offering, rejected at the altar.

Anger, cold and sharp, had replaced the initial shock. It was a clean feeling, cutting through the fog of his illness. It focused him.

They think I’m nothing. A stain to be removed. He clenched his empty hands, the plastic tube of his cannula brushing his cheek with each ragged breath.

He turned down a quieter street, lined with parked cars and shadowed by old trees. His mind was a storm of broken images, Elena’s furious eyes, the security guards’ impersonal grip, the flash of her phone camera capturing his defeat.

The roar of an engine was the only warning.

A black SUV, windows tinted to oblivion, swerved violently from the lane and mounted the curb, screeching to a halt just feet in front of him. The headlights blinded him.

Before the shock could even register, the doors flew open.

Dark figures moved with brutal efficiency. One clamped a thick, gloved hand over his mouth, silencing the shout that never came. Another yanked a coarse, black sack over his head, plunging him into sudden, suffocating darkness.

He fought then, a burst of panicked strength. He kicked out, his heel connecting with something hard.

A grunt of pain. A fist drove into his stomach, driving the precious little air from his lungs. He gagged, the cannula tearing at his face as they ripped it from his nose. The world spun.

Strong hands seized him under his arms and legs. He was lifted, weightless and helpless, his weak struggles as effective as a child’s. He was thrown onto a hard, carpeted floor. The door slammed shut with a final, metallic thud.

The engine roared again. The SUV accelerated, throwing him against a seat leg as it merged back into the flow of the city, carrying him away from the sidewalk, from the light, from everything he knew.

Into the waiting dark.