“No,” I said carefully. Mateo was staring at me inquisitively but I could only shrug. I turned my attention back to the phone. “Why?”

“Um,” she said. “I’m not sure if it will be on the online version or not. But perhaps you want to go to the store and get a copy for yourself, to see. There is a…there is a picture of you in it.”

My heart came to a screeching halt. “What?” I asked, voice hard.

Now Mateo was sitting up, trying to get my attention, to figure out what was going on. But even I couldn’t figure it out because what Claudia had just said made no sense at all.

“How could I be in it?” I asked carefully.

“You just are,” she said. “On page eight. It, um, it’s a picture of you. The paparazzi took it.”

“What?!”

“You’re in Barcelona, on the beach. You’re topless in the pictures.”

I gasped loud enough to shake the walls. I shot up straight to my feet, hand to my mouth, the phone nearly dropping out of my hands. “How can that be?”

“I don’t know,” Claudia said, sounding desperate. “They often take pictures of celebrities on the beach. Your, um, nipples are blocked out. But it is you. Three pictures in a row. In one you are kissing Mateo. The other he is carrying you on his shoulder. The other he is slapping your behind. Vera, these were all about Mateo. And now they are about you.”

I couldn’t even breathe. I let the phone slip through my fingers, thudding to the floor. I pushed past Mateo, grabbed my house keys and a ten euro note from the change bowl on the counter, and ran out the door. It didn’t matter that I was barefoot and in pajama pants and a t-shirt, I was running down the stairwell, through the lobby and out into the dark of night.

The nearest convenience store was open late and just a block away—perfect for when you needed coffee, toilet paper, eggs, or a gossip magazine. The bell above the door rang as I pushed myself into the fluorescent lights, my bare feet slapping on the sticky floor. I didn’t care and I didn’t have to search for long. There it was, propped up below the counter, beside the newspaper and the candy bars.

I snatched it up, trying my hardest not to flip through the pages, and bought it. And by buying it, I mean I slapped the ten euro note on the counter, and without meeting the clerk’s eyes, I left it there and ran out of the store with the magazine.

I made it about half a block when I decided to break down and flip through it, but I saw the shadowy figure of Mateo leaving the apartment building and heading straight to me. “Vera,” I heard him call after me, but I was on a mission.

Under the orange glow of the streetlights, I flipped to page eight.

And there I fucking was.

It was just as Claudia had described. Though the pictures were grainy, I looked as pale as a ghost next to Mateo, and slightly white trash when you factored in my tattoos and the fact that I was topless. You could even make out a bit of cellulite on my upper thigh.

This was a nightmare come true.

“What is wrong, Vera?” Mateo demanded when he caught up with me. “You’re not wearing shoes. Let’s get you back inside.”

He tried to put his arm around me to usher me back home, but he looked down and saw what I had gone loco over. It was just as well since I was too much in shock to explain anything.

He swore in Spanish and ripped the magazine from my hands. I was almost too much in horror and disbelief to pay attention to how he was feeling about the whole thing, but I couldn’t help but notice his face. I’d never see him so mad, ever. Even under the unnatural glow of the streetlamps, his face was turning dark red, his jaw so tense it really seemed he might bite someone’s head off. The magazine began to crumple in his hand.

I reached out and put my hand on top of his. “Wait. What does it say?”

He couldn’t even look at me.

“Mateo,” I said desperately. “Please. What does the article say?” When he still wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t break that trance he had seemed to go into, I yelled, “Please! It’s about me, I have a right to fucking know!”

Finally he blinked and turned his head to stare down at me, a strain of softness in his hard eyes. He swallowed and said absently, “It says…it says that I have been photographed on the Barcelona beach with someone who is not my wife. It says that we were spending a few days in the city and they are wondering if Isabel and I are getting a divorce. They added, if not, we will be after this. They didn’t mention Chloe Ann, thank god.”

“Is that all they said about me?” I asked. “That I was just someone that is not your wife?”

He stared at me, worried.

“Mateo,” I said, “I have a right to know. I can handle it. If you don’t tell me what it says, I’m just going to find it online and Google translate it.”

He still stared at me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.

“Fine!” I said, and I turned and ran across the empty road over to the apartment. I was sure Mateo would have yelled at me to stop, but he was still standing there, staring at nothing, the magazine in his hand. He had gone catatonic with rage.

If it had been anything else, I would have stayed and helped him, brought him inside. But this involved me too much and I hated being lied to.

I burst into the apartment and opened up the laptop on the coffee table. I did a quick search for Diez Minutos and started clicking through the magazine, searching and searching until I searched for Mateo Casalles.

There it was, the first story to pop up, the picture of Mateo slapping my jiggly ass. And the way the search engine displayed the results, the story underneath it was the one I had read back in Las Palabras, the one of him and Isabel at the restaurant.

I breathed in deeply, my eyes flitting between the two stories, me with my tits hanging out, the skimpy bikini I got from H&M, all pale skin, wild hair and ink, playing in the surf with a man fifteen years older than her. Then there was Isabel with her elegant short blonde hair, mature yet beautiful face, classy dress, hand in hand with her sharp-dressed husband. I knew exactly how it looked, and therefore knew exactly how this would play out. I didn’t even need Google translate for that. I was the trashy young thing on the side. The homewrecking slut who broke up a marriage between an ex-football star and semi-royalty, leaving their younger daughter in the wake.

I was worse than the other woman. I was Jezebel, waiting to be thrown to the dogs.

I knew right there that we were doomed. We always had been.

The worst part was that this whole paparazzi thing caught me unaware. It wasn’t like Mateo was being called for interviews or had photographers normally following him around or fans outside his door. To me he was just Mateo, not this ex-football star, so I never even thought about any of that in our day to day lives. Only occasionally would something remind me of it, say a clip of the Atletico team on TV or on rainy days when Mateo walked with a slight limp. Otherwise, I had lived in a bubble, totally unaware that he was someone really important.

I sighed in frustration and steeled myself against what I was about to read. I clicked on the article about us and hit Google Translate up on the top.

It turned out that what Mateo said was more or less true. He just left out a whole bunch about me. Mainly, that I wasn’t just “some other woman,” but according to Google translate, a wanton young girl who seemed a very unlikely match for someone as respected as Mateo Casalles. They also added there probably wouldn’t be much respect for Mateo after this, though what older man hasn’t thought about having a mistress half their age.

These fucking magazines were just as bad as the ones back home. And though I sympathized with celebrities with the way they were treated on gossip sites, I still read the stories eagerly. I never in a million years thought I would be the subject of one of them.