PART 3 — THE ACCOUNT HE THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER FIND
For a few seconds, nobody in the room moved.
The bank representative repeated herself through the phone.
“Mrs. Martín, the supplementary card was issued four months ago. Would you like me to read the recent transactions connected to it?”
I looked straight at Sergio.
“Yes,” I said.
He shook his head.
“Elena, hang up.”
I ignored him.
The woman began reading.
A €620 cash withdrawal.
A €950 electronics purchase.
Two restaurant charges totaling more than €400.
Another cash withdrawal.
Then a payment of €2,300 to a furniture store.
My stomach tightened.
I had never bought furniture worth €2,300.
“Keep going,” I said.
Sergio stepped forward.
One of the officers immediately blocked him again.
“That’s enough,” Sergio snapped. “This is private.”
I almost laughed.
“My bank account is private?”
His face twisted.
“You know what I mean.”
No.
I didn’t.
Not anymore.
The bank representative continued.
Then she read an address connected to one of the delivery transactions.
It wasn’t ours.
It was Rocío’s apartment.
I slowly turned toward her.
She looked like she wanted the floor to open beneath her.
“The furniture went to your house?” I asked.
She shook her head too quickly.
“I didn’t know how he paid for it.”
“But you knew he bought it?”
She looked at Sergio.
He stared back at her with a warning in his eyes.
That was when I understood that Rocío knew more than she had admitted.
“Tell me everything,” I said.
“Elena—” Sergio started.
“No.”
My voice came out stronger than I expected.
“You’ve been telling me what to do for years. You don’t get to speak for me anymore.”
Rocío lowered her eyes.
“He told me you had agreed to help me furnish the apartment.”
I stared at her.
“Did that sound believable to you?”
She didn’t answer.
Because we both knew the answer.
I had stopped lending her money months earlier.
I had told her clearly that I was done paying for her emergencies.
Yet somehow, she had accepted thousands of euros in furniture, clothes, dinners, and cash without once asking me.
The bank representative then asked if I wanted all cards frozen.
“Yes.”
Sergio shouted, “Don’t do that!”
Everyone looked at him.
And there it was.
Panic.
Real panic.
I pressed the phone harder to my ear.
“Freeze everything.”
“Elena, you’re going to cause a disaster.”
“What disaster?”
He said nothing.
That frightened me more than anything else.
I asked the bank representative whether there were any other products connected to my name.
She paused while checking.
Then she said:
“There is also a personal loan.”
I felt the room tilt.
“A what?”
“A personal loan opened approximately five months ago.”
My hand went cold.
“How much?”
There was another pause.
“Twenty-five thousand euros.”
I couldn’t speak.
Rocío covered her mouth.
Even the officers exchanged a glance.
I finally whispered, “I never took out a loan.”
The representative’s tone changed immediately.
She asked me several security questions and then explained that the loan application had been submitted digitally.
Payments were being withdrawn from an account connected to my name.
“Where did the money go?” I asked.
“I can’t provide the full destination details over this call, but I can tell you that the funds were transferred after approval.”
“To whom?”
She hesitated.
“Part of the transfer appears to have gone to another account at our bank.”
I looked at Sergio.
He stopped looking at me.
That was all the answer I needed.
“You took a loan in my name.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“What exactly was it like?”
“I was going to pay it back.”
The room went completely silent.
Even Rocío stared at him.
I felt something strange happen inside me.
I stopped feeling shocked.
I stopped feeling afraid.
I became calm.
Dangerously calm.
“How did you get approved?”
He didn’t answer.
“How did you sign documents in my name?”
Still nothing.
Then I remembered.
Six months earlier, Sergio had insisted that we upgrade our home internet contract.
He had asked for photographs of my ID because he said the provider needed them.
I had sent them to him without thinking.
My passport.
My national ID card.
A utility bill.
Everything someone would need.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
Sergio’s face told me I was right.
“You used the documents I sent you.”
He finally exploded.
“We’re married! I was trying to fix things!”
“Fix what?”
“Our finances.”
“My finances were fine.”
“Mine weren’t!”
The words came out before he could stop them.
And suddenly the entire room changed.
I stared at him.
“What happened to your money?”
He looked away.
Rocío’s expression shifted too.
“Sergio?”
“Stay out of it.”
But now she stepped toward him.
“You told me business was going great.”
He cursed under his breath.
I realized something else.
All those months he had bragged about commissions.
New customers.
Big sales.
Bonuses.
But recently, he had always found an excuse when bills came.
The mortgage transfer.
Groceries.
Utilities.
Insurance.
I had been paying more and more while believing he was simply being careless.
“What did you do?” I asked.
He said nothing.
One of the officers spoke.
“Mr. Lozano, it may be in your interest not to say anything further without legal counsel.”
Sergio ignored him.
He looked at me.
“I made an investment.”
“What investment?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“If you stole €25,000 in my name, it matters.”
“It was supposed to double.”
My heart sank.
Rocío whispered, “You didn’t.”
Sergio turned on her.
“Shut up!”
But her reaction told me she knew exactly what he meant.
“What?” I asked her.
She shook her head.
“Rocío.”
She looked at me.
Then at her brother.
And finally she said:
“He started gambling online last year.”
Sergio shouted her name.
She flinched.
But she kept talking.
“He said it wasn’t gambling. He called it sports trading. Bets, live games, football, basketball… I don’t know.”
I stared at my husband.
He looked furious.
Not ashamed.
Not sorry.
Furious that the secret was out.
“How much did you lose?”
He said nothing.
“How much, Sergio?”
Rocío answered instead.
“I heard him tell someone he was down almost forty thousand.”
The number hit me like another cup of boiling coffee.
Forty thousand euros.
And suddenly the strange months made sense.
The missing money.
The anger.
The pressure.
The obsession with my card.
He hadn’t been trying to help his sister.
He had been drowning.
And he had decided that my money, my credit, and my identity were life jackets.
I sat down slowly.
The officer asked whether I needed water.
I shook my head.
I was thinking about every password Sergio might know.
Every document he had touched.
Every account he could have accessed.
Then my phone vibrated.
A notification appeared.
EMAIL RECEIVED.
The subject line made my blood run cold.
“Password changed successfully.”
It was from my investment account.
The account containing almost all the savings my mother had left me when she died.
More than €60,000.
I hadn’t changed the password.
I looked up at Sergio.
He was staring at my phone.
And the expression on his face told me everything.
Someone had just entered that account.
And for the first time that night, Sergio wasn’t angry anymore.
He looked terrified…….
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 4…
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