On my wedding day, people looked at me with sympathy because they believed I was marrying a man everyone called poor.

The next morning, feeling a little embarrassed, I asked my husband if he could lend me 500 pesos to buy groceries.

He didn’t say a word. He simply picked up his phone.

Five minutes later, my bank account sent me a notification and that’s when everything people believed about him began to fall apart.

The day I wore my wedding dress, no one in my family looked happy.

It wasn’t because the ceremony was sad or because I looked bad.
It was because everyone knew the truth: I had been asked to replace my younger sister and marry the man she refused.

My husband, Alejandro, came from a small town near Jalisco.
He worked independently, his income rumored to be unstable. He didn’t own a home in the city, and after the wedding I would have to live with his elderly mother.

Among the guests sat my younger sister Daniela, the woman who had originally been engaged to him. Her lips were pressed tight, her expression cold.