LIVING INSIDE A LIE

The next morning, Rebecca moved into Luciano Lombardo's beautiful villa as stipulated in her contract, but he still hadn't shown up. Rebecca was unhappy with the situation, but she had to act as if everything was going great. She had to maintain the facade as much as she could, or at least until she secured the future of her parents' company. So when Grandfather Joseph Lombardo showed up at the door a week after the wedding, the young woman greeted him with a big smile on her face.

"Your father told me a lot about you. He was very proud," the old man told her as they chatted peacefully in the villa garden.

At first, Rebecca felt somewhat uncomfortable with the man's presence, as she did not understand how he could be such a good friend of her father's without her ever having heard of him. But the stories Mr. Lombardo told her during his regular visits confirmed that Robert and he were indeed quite close. In fact, on a couple of occasions, the old man had come with some photos of him and Robert when they were younger, as well as showing her other objects he kept as a memento of his old friend. It seemed that Joseph had a lot of respect and affection for Rebecca's father, and that was something that made her heart happy.

However, Rebecca remained alert, as she knew that Mr. Lombardo was keeping an eye on everything that was happening in her marriage, so she had to be careful with every move she made to avoid him finding out that his grandson had not set foot in that place or, worse yet, that they had gotten married without even seeing each other's faces.

But despite the fact that the first few times Rebecca received Joseph at the villa had been to cover up her lie, things slowly began to change. As time went by, Rebecca grew very fond of the old man, as he was like the grandfather she had always wanted. For his part, Joseph also felt great affection for the girl, and it didn't take him long to realize that she was as wonderful as his friend had told him, and he was happy to know that she was now his beloved grandson's wife. He could not have chosen a better woman for him, so he did not miss the opportunity to remind Luciano how grateful he should be to him and the girl's father for deciding on that union.

"You have to admit that I'm excellent at choosing partners," he told Luciano one day, laughing. "Your wife is wonderful, you must be pleased."

"Yes. That's true, grandpa. You were right about the marriage," he lied while pretending to smile as best he could.

"She's beautiful, she knows how to cook, she's tidy, intelligent, funny, polite... I don't know what else you could ask for," he said, still laughing. Luciano tried to smile again, but this time it was harder for him. He didn't understand why his grandfather was so enchanted with that woman.

"She's perfect!" he exclaimed, trying to look happy, although he couldn't help but sound a bit sarcastic, which luckily his grandfather didn't notice.

"I hope she also makes you very happy in the other aspects you like," his grandfather said with a mischievous expression. Luciano tried to smile once again and nodded.

"Of course," he said, and then changing the subject.

Luciano didn't like his grandfather talking about his wife. He always tried to avoid it or looked for a way to change the subject as soon as Joseph mentioned her. He had nothing against her, he didn't even know her, but he feared that his lie would be discovered, so he did everything possible not to mention her. However, his grandfather had told him so many times how fantastic she was that sometimes he felt curious and thought that maybe he should take a walk through "The Villa" and at least get to know her, although he quickly discarded that idea, he didn't want to have a wife, he refused to be a married man, so keeping the girl away from him was his way of telling himself that he was still a free man.

Time passed with Luciano and Rebecca busy with their own affairs. Rebecca continued to live in Luciano's mansion, which he refused to visit. She wondered if she would ever get to know him. It wasn't that she really cared, but sometimes she felt curious to at least know what he was like, since she hadn't even seen a photo of him. Sometimes she thought that Luciano had never lived in that house and had only bought it to keep her away from him.

Either way, the lie continued its course without problems. When Joseph called his grandson to tell him about his meetings with Rebecca and to ask when he would see him at the villa, Luciano gave him some excuse he had prepared and went along with it. His grandfather never doubted him. After all, he was the one he had put in charge of all his businesses; there was no one in the world that Joseph Lombardo trusted more than his beloved grandson.

For her part, Rebecca also did everything possible to ensure that Joseph never noticed Luciano's absence from the villa. She tried to have some male things around the house to avoid it being so obvious that she was living alone, and she always came up with some way to maintain the lie. In fact, one day she dared to leave a pair of men's pants lying in the living room and made up a story to Joseph that made him understand that Luciano had left them there after a "little encounter" with her.

Rebecca was really trying hard to keep the lie from falling apart, and although sometimes it was hard for her to come up with something to explain why Luciano was never in the house every time Joseph visited her, she did everything possible to assure him that both were happy and that in their intimacy, everything was going well. Rebecca knew that her family business depended on it, so she maintained her facade until the end. However, there came a point when things began to tire her, and she wanted a change.

She had been living with that lie for almost a year when she decided that she no longer wanted to continue living alone in that house, but it wasn't as easy as just packing up and leaving. She had to think of a plan that would allow her to move to another place without her false marriage being suspected. She was tired of constant supervision, lies, but above all, of being so far away from her friends. She felt she was living in a prison just to make sure she complied with the contract she had signed.

Rebecca spent a couple of months thinking about the perfect plan that would allow her to get out of there. She gradually put together her strategy until one day she felt she had everything ready. She rehearsed for several hours what she would say to Luciano's grandfather before he arrived for one of his weekly visits.

"Mr. Lombardo, I need to talk to you about something important," she told him one day when he came to visit her.

"Why do you call me Mr.? I told you to call me grandpa!" Rebecca smiled.

"Grandpa, I have something important to tell you."

"Are you pregnant?" he asked excitedly. Rebecca's jaw dropped in surprise at that unexpected question.

"No!" she replied, still stunned. "It's not that," the old man seemed disappointed.

"Then, what is it?"

"I'm moving," she blurted out a little nervously.

"Why? What happened? You're not thinking of leaving Luciano, are you?" he said suddenly, a little upset.

"No. Everything is fine," she tried to calm him down.

"If my grandson did something to you, tell me and I'll take care of him," Joseph got angry suddenly, thinking that maybe Rebecca wanted a divorce, and although she hoped to do it at some point, she couldn't yet.

"No, Grandpa. Everything is fine between us. Don't worry," she assured him, trying to calm him down. "It's because of my university degree," she said, and the old man seemed to calm down. "I'm almost done with my studies, and I'm working on my thesis. The problem is that I lose a lot of time going back and forth from the university, so I've been talking to Luciano about moving to a place closer to the campus," she explained, trying to control her nerves, but Joseph was watching her very attentively, and that made her anxious. "It will be something temporary," she hurried to say. "It will be while I finish my thesis, then we can come back here," she said, holding her breath.

Rebecca was very tense because of the expression on the old man's face, and for the next few seconds, Joseph didn't say anything at all, he remained lost in thought with a completely serious face, something that made Rebecca's nerves stand on end. She began to doubt if she had done the right thing. Maybe she had messed up, and her lie was going to be discovered. She bit her lower lip from the anxiety she felt until Joseph took a deep breath and, looking her in the face, gave her a smile.

"It's okay, my girl. I understand," he finally said. Rebecca breathed a sigh of relief. "You have to prioritize your career, it's what your father would want for you, it's just that... I'm going to miss you," he confessed.

"I'm going to miss you too, Grandpa," she said with a heavy heart as she got up to give him a big hug.

Joseph was the only good thing about that senseless marriage. He had become the grandfather she had always wanted, and it hurt a little to leave him, as she had become very fond of him and had even gotten used to his visits, but she didn't feel good about the situation of her marriage, and she liked even less having to lie to him all the time to hide the fact that his grandson hadn't even wanted to meet her. She felt she needed to get out of there; she had to escape from that invisible prison.

"I promise to visit you, and you can call me on the phone whenever you want," she assured him. Joseph smiled at her. "When you want me to come, just call me, and I promise to organize everything to come and spend a few days here with you, okay?" The old man nodded, and she hugged him again.

That same day, after saying goodbye to Joseph, Rebecca began looking for an apartment that was close to her university campus. She thought it had to be where she had to live if she wanted to maintain the lie she had told, and she had to avoid having problems with Luciano, as she had not consulted him, and although it did not go entirely against the agreement she had signed, she did not know how her "husband" would take the news, although after what she had experienced, she hoped he would continue to ignore her as he had done until now.

Luckily for Rebecca, a couple of days later, she managed to find the perfect apartment for her, and she didn't think twice about buying it, so by the following week, she had already moved into her new home and hoped that the time she had left married would pass as quickly as possible, since as soon as she could assume the direction of the company, she would divorce Luciano and leave that part of her life behind forever.