Don Arnulfo’s voice was a venomous whisper, low enough not to alert nearby guests, but loud enough to cut like a knife.
Leo stopped and looked into his father’s eyes. They were the same as always: cold, calculating, disappointed.
—Good evening, Dad. I came to Rico’s wedding. He’s my brother.
Don Arnulfo let out a dry, humorless laugh as he scanned his son from head to toe with a visible grimace of disgust.
“Like this? Dressed like a peasant?” the patriarch snapped, discreetly pointing at the guayabera. “Look at you, Leonardo. You’re a disgrace. There are important people here. Ministers, international partners, the country’s elite. And you show up like this? You look like one of my guests’ chauffeurs.”
“Clothes don’t make the person, Dad. I just came to offer my congratulations,” Leo replied with a calmness that irritated the old man even more.
“Congratulations?” Don Arnulfo took a step forward, invading his personal space. “Don’t fool yourself. You probably came because you heard about the magnitude of the event and you need money. I always knew you’d come crawling back when you realized that playing the hero doesn’t pay the bills. ‘Serving the country’… Bah! That’s not the future, that’s mediocrity.”
Leo clenched his jaw slightly, but maintained his composure. He had weathered storms at sea and hostile negotiations in conflict zones; the insults of a man embittered by greed were not going to break him.
—I don’t want your money, sir. Not a single penny.
“Then don’t ruin my evening,” Don Arnulfo declared, pointing an imperative finger toward the back of the room, beyond the guests’ tables, near the service entrances and the kitchen. “If you’re going to stay, you’ll sit back there. At the service table. With the chauffeurs, the nannies, and the bodyguards. And I absolutely forbid you from going near the head table or trying to speak to my business partners. No one must know that I have a son who… amounted to nothing in life.”
It was a low blow, a direct hit to his pride. But Leo didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing him bleed.
—Okay, Dad. Whatever you say.
Leo walked with his head held high, crossing the entire room under the inquisitive gaze of a few onlookers. He reached the last table, a simple board with a less elegant tablecloth, where the millionaires’ employees were eating hurriedly. He sat down there, in silence.