[Everyone says Otis loved you so much back then that he defied his entire family to marry you. That he knelt in the Sanchez ancestral hall for seven days straight—no food, no water—and took the family's punishment just to make them accept you.]
[And your mother, clinging to life by a thread? She's only alive because Otis brought in the best medical team money could buy.]
[But you don't know the truth, do you?]
Another video arrived.
[It was never what you thought.]
The lighting was dim. A private club—Otis's usual haunt. I recognized every face in the room.
Someone's voice, teasing:
"Otis, what's the deal with you and Debbie? This whole mess—what's the point?"
Otis sat in the center, rolling our wedding ring between his fingers. The man pressed on.
"Debbie's been running wild out there. Five boy toys, at least. Aren't you worried she'll catch something? Doesn't it disgust you?"
"She's out there running wild, and you're just going to look the other way?"
Otis said nothing.
It was Jemima who snapped, slamming her glass down on the table.
"At the end of the day, you still have feelings for Debbie."
"For that old woman!"
"If you love her so much, what are you even doing with me?!"
She whipped around to leave.
Only then did Otis move. He caught her wrist, pulled her onto his lap, and laughed—a low, lazy sound.
"Why would I have feelings for her?"
He leaned back, perfectly at ease.
"Debbie hasn't actually done anything. Those men she's been seeing? They're just props. Tools to get a rise out of me."
"I know her better than she knows herself. She has lines she won't cross."
"The day she actually does something like that, she stops being Debbie."
Laughter rippled through the private room.
Jemima still wasn't convinced.
"Just because you say so doesn't make it true."
"Do you have surveillance or something? How would you even know?!"
Her voice pitched into a petulant whine, and Otis chuckled, amused. He set his phone on the table.
"See for yourself."
On his phone—
Every single chat log. Ten men. Every message I'd ever exchanged with them. And the videos—every date, captured frame by frame, stored in a folder on his device. Not a second missing.
Otis's voice was flat. Almost bored. But the chill of it seeped into my bones.
"Women."
"All that jealousy and posturing—it gets tedious. Debbie wanted to play games, so I gave her playmates."
"Sure."