Episode 2

"What is this bitch doing at my son's funeral?"

Adelaida recognized that voice that she had heard few and unpleasant times. She looked haughtily towards the person who said it: her dear ex-mother-in-law, but her gaze remained fixed on the tearful woman next to her. She was surprised to notice that she looked a lot like her ten years ago when she met Francois, and she also noticed her large pregnant belly.

But even so, she disguised her astonishment and continued towards the coffin.

"Stop right there, Adelaida DuPont, you have no business here. Go away with your bastard away from our family, respect Francois's real wife in her pain" - There she found out that this woman is the real widow.

"Parents-in-law, who is she?" asks the woman, staring at her.

"A social climber and fortune hunter who wanted to ensnare our son. But I'm going to have her kicked out, she has no business here" - her ex-mother-in-law finished spewing her venom and went to call her guards.

"Relax, 'parents-in-law', I just wanted to verify that my dear 'ex-husband' is indeed in that coffin, because one could expect anything from him, even playing dead. With how much of a liar he was, who knows if it was true" - she glanced at the deceased and left in the same manner as she entered, radiating gallantry and with her head held high.

Once outside the premises, she got into her car with her driver, who took her to her golden cage. On the way, she remembered what her life was like before meeting Francois, and although she thought he was the love of her life, it was the opposite. A being who only loves himself, an egomaniac, a being who only thinks he is perfect, the others are just beings who only take away his oxygen and are not even worth what he is worth.

She remembered her childhood in a miserable orphanage run by Capuchin nuns. An old building with high walls and cold rooms, where being a good Catholic was the premise of her caregivers. Therefore, to escape the boredom of her rigid chair, with strict schedules and thousands of rosaries, coronillas, prayers and chants, she enrolled in the performing arts workshops that a B-movie film director came to teach at the orphanage one day.

Upon turning 18 and, thank God, no longer being able to stay in the convent-like orphanage, she took her few belongings and looked for work in a small theater in the bohemian neighborhood of "Les Hayes".

Although she didn't earn much, she added to her salary what the tourists gave her as tips. In this way, she paid for a small 3x3 room in a rickety pension from the time of Napoleon, and did her studies of contemporary literature at the public university of Paris.

She lived like this for two years until a film director discovered her one afternoon in the theater playing the role of "Heloise" in the romantic drama "Letters of Abelard and Heloise" and took her to play a secondary role in the famous French film "Oh la la".

It was there that she met Francois Pinault, son of the magnates of the film industry in France and owners of television channels around the world. For her, it was love at first sight, for him it was the glimpse of the goddess "Venus de Milo". He could not believe that he had seen again that young woman he once met in the dramatic role of "Heloise" and whom his father did not let him approach to start a conversation and, who knows, propose to work with them.

"It is noticeable that she is one of those who, if given the opportunity, will leave you with nothing".

"A fortune hunter," he thought, but if he now had the opportunity to be with her, he was not going to miss it.

And so, some time later, a romance began where he excused himself for not introducing her to his prestigious family, as he was waiting to inherit his conglomerate and in this way, he could be free to present her to them and to the world as the woman he loved.

Two years after starting their hidden romance, they married in a clandestine ceremony where, in front of a judge, he made her sign a prenuptial agreement renouncing everything and she, like a stupid lovesick woman, signed.

Two years after the wedding, Adelaida announced her pregnancy, which he took with too much enthusiasm, he took care of her during the gestation with longing and overwhelming care. His heir was going to be born, he would be named after him "Francois Pinault" and he would be his stronghold, his prolongation, his pride and when his firstborn was born he would obviously make public his marriage with Adelaida DuPont.

But all this fell apart the day the baby was born. An unforeseen complication in the multiple consultations and ultrasounds performed on Adelaida gave a devastating diagnosis. The baby was born sick and this, Francois and much less Adelaida expected, but unfortunately the man she loved blamed her without being so.

"Beta Thalassemia" was the diagnosis, and the baby was born with severe anemia that required an urgent blood transfusion and admission to the neonatal intensive care unit. The day after his birth, Francois registered his baby, without Adelaida's permission, with the name of Francis DuPont.

Adelaida did not even have time to get angry about Francois's daring to register her baby with that name and without his parent's last name, and given the stress of the situation her offspring was going through, she accepted the meager excuse he gave her for having registered him that way.

"My little Heloise, I did it to protect you. If the press finds out that our baby was born sick, they will eat us alive and my family will not inherit me as promised when I turn 35. There is little left my dove, only five years and we can shout our love to the four winds" - was the excuse that Francois gave her, and after that, if she saw him once a month, it was a lot.

And as if it were a premonition of the epithet with which he wooed her by calling her Heloise, her tragic romance resembled the idyllic French couple of the Middle Ages, with the difference that her Abelard would not give his most precious virility for love of her, not even crazy.

Months of hospitalization administering transfusions and treatments to Francis was the life Adelaida had. She was keen to take care of her son, she dedicated herself to him body and soul, losing her glow and joy. She only lived for her son, since she never heard from the father again, although she made sure that the two of them lacked nothing in terms of economics. But of affection, nothing.

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