LIVING INSIDE A LIE

The next morning, Rebecca was moving into Luciano Lombardo's beautiful villa as stipulated in her contract. However, 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 façade 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 a 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 a 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 façade until the end. However, there came a point when things began to tire her, and she wanted a change.