Max took his jacket.
They arrived at Marina’s house in the late afternoon. Damien ranks the bell. Marina opened the door and saw Damien. She tried to shut it. He held his arm in the doorway without forcing it. He called Nadia by name from the hallway.
Nadia appeared at the end of the hall. Marina turned toward her.
“If you walk out that door, you have nothing left here. No job, no money, nothing.”
Nadia went to her room. She took her small bag, her few belongings, and came back. She walked past Marina without looking at her and went out. The door slammed shut.
At Damien’s place, Nadia didn’t know what to do with all that space. On the first evening, she wanted to cook, clean, do something. But Damien stopped her.
“You are not a servant here.”
She sat down, her hands on her knees, not knowing where to look.
He told her about an adult education school. Nadia’s eyes changed. Not an immediate smile, something deeper, as if someone had just returned something that had been taken from her.
A few days later, Damien took her to his office, and Nadia walked into those large air-conditioned spaces in her simple clothes, her eyes looking everywhere.
At one point, she saw the secretary walking past with a tray, and Nadia naturally stood up to help her.
“Wait, I’ll help you with that.”
The secretary stopped short and looked at Nadia without understanding, then glanced at Damien, who smiled politely, though his eyes were not smiling.
“No, no, it’s fine, it’s my job.”
Nadia just shrugged and sat back down as if nothing had happened, without noticing the looks being exchanged around her, as if she were still in Marina’s house, where work was the only thing she knew.
That evening, Damien gently told her that she had made him uncomfortable. Nadia did not understand what she had done wrong.
She apologized anyway.
Damien said it was nothing, but something had changed in the way he looked at her.
A few days later, Damien puts Max without Nadia. He let himself speak freely. He said that Nadia was beautiful, but that she would never belong in his world, that he had tried, but the difference was too great.
Max listened and let the silence do his work. Then he spoke gently. He said that Damien deserved a woman of his level, that no one could blame him for wanting better.
He proposed a test.
He would go see Nadia alone and offer her money to spend the night with him. If she accepted, Damien would have his answer. If she refused, he would never again have a reason to doubt.
Damien looked out the window. He said nothing for a long moment, then he said yes.
At that same moment in the apartment, Nadia was sitting at the table with her school notebooks open in front of her. She had started classes a few weeks earlier.
She held her pen awkwardly. She repeated the same letters over and over again, her tongue slightly out from concentration. She was struggling, but she did not stop.
The next morning, Damien left the apartment, telling Nadia that he had a meeting and would be home late.
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