When Umberto and Albina arrived at the Espina family home from the old Santangel family mansion, it was almost dusk.
They were both tired, she went to take a shower, then Umberto.
When he came out of the bathroom, while drying his wet hair, he saw that she was already with her hair dry, leaning against the headboard of the bed, reading the newspaper left by her father Juan.
She was very concentrated in reading, word by word, and from time to time she smiled.
-Albina – he called her, got into the quilt, hugged her and leaned down to read the diary together with her.
The diary was very interesting, it seemed that his image was reflected in his vivid words, he was a man who struggled through life and tried to be very positive.
He had even written in a humorous way what he had gone through in his hard times.
-Surely your dad was an amazing person, cheerful and funny – along with her, Umberto read a few pages, she said and sighed.
She nodded, and gently rubbed the yellowed paper, tenderness could be seen in her eyes.
-I had never seen my dad complaining about life, even when he disliked grandma, or when he didn’t get along with his brother, he never complained.
He looked gently at the profile of her face.
“To have a daughter like that, persistent and strong, what kind of father had he been?”
She felt a little sleepy as she read the paper, and was about to close it. At that moment, he reached out, pressed the sheet that was open, and read the words on that sheet with a very solemn expression.
-Is something the matter?
In a single second, she lost her reverie for Umberto, and looked at him dazedly.
-This date… -he murmured, his gaze fixed on the date written on the sheet.
He had never been able to forget that day, when he was sixteen years old, and attended a wedding with his parents, but a fire happened in the hotel due to an accident. At that time, the guests who had been very elegant and polite lost their heads, and began to flee the hotel desperately like madmen.
At the age of sixteen, he was skinny and his strength was very limited, so he could not compete with the adults. Therefore, he was pushed into the innermost place with Yolanda, who was with him.
The flames were increasing, and the place was full of smoke. It looked like they were in an oven, as if they might be burned to charcoal in the next second.
The fire blocked the escape route. Because they had both inhaled the smoke, they had difficulty breathing and could not keep their eyes open. Before he lost his consciousness, he thought he would end up waiting for his death in despair, but when he woke up, he discovered that he was in the hospital.
Yolanda told him that it was she who had saved him.
That fire had a great impact on him, in the early days, he always dreamed that the fire burned him to death, and every time he woke up from the dream with fright.
As time went by, the impact of the fire had lessened a lot, but as long as he remembered it, Umberto became very uncomfortable.
Albina saw that his expression was strange and somewhat painful, she hugged him quickly and patted him to calm his emotions.
After his consciousness returned, he hugged her, tucked his head into her neck and breathed in her scent a few times before calming down.
-This date is the day of the fire that year.
Hearing his words, Albina was surprised. She understood why he had had such an ugly expression. He had experienced something so terrible. Even after so many years, he still had lingering fears.
Just like the car accident she and her father had been in, it was also his nightmare.
After he calmed down, they both opened the diary, read what John had written about what happened on that day.
In the first line, Juan wrote that that day was Albina’s birthday, however, he had to attend an event, and could not return home in time to celebrate her birthday.
At that mention, Albina remembered. Except when she was away from home for her studies, her father had been absent for her birthday only once.
Her father had promised to accompany her to the amusement park on that day, but, suddenly, he had another event to attend, so they had to cancel the trip to the amusement park.
She had been looking forward to that day, so when she found out that her father could not return home on time, she became depressed. It was her mother who suggested making a birthday cake together that made her cheerful.
When they finished making the cake, the two of them decided to wait for their father. But he did not return all night.
When Juan finally returned home, his clothes were very dirty and dusty. You could see that he had tried to clean his cheeks, but perhaps under a limited condition, he had not been able to clean them well, and they looked dark.
In addition, he had burns on his arms.
John said he had gone to the hospital to bandage the burns, but they still looked very bad.
That appearance of his scared both her and her mother very much. In order not to scare Albina any more, her mother took her back to her room, so she didn’t know what happened next.
The next day, her father was back to his usual energetic self, and her mother did not mention the matter any more. Since she was very young, she quickly forgot about it.
But when she read the diary, she remembered this matter.
And now, she and Umberto had finished reading that day’s diary, and they were both silent.
After a long time, he said in a hoarse voice:
-It turns out that the person who saved me in that year was your father?
Her eyes suddenly became moist, and they turned red.
The other day she had talked about this with him, she had said that the person who saved him didn’t know that Umberto was looking for him, or that he had already died.
She had never imagined that her assumption had been correct, because his father had died several years ago.
He hadn’t known that his father had saved anyone, although he remembered his father was wearing burns when he returned home, he had never thought it was for saving Umberto and Yolanda’s lives.
“Sure, Dad was always a kind person and liked to help others. Saving someone in a fire isn’t something very surprising about him.”
However, the irony was that he had also saved Yolanda, but lost his life at her hands.
-The Carballal family owes too much to my dad -Albina gritted her teeth, her body trembled and tears ran down her cheeks.
Umberto was also in a lot of pain, and he became very sad. The person who saved him was Albina’s father, but Yolanda deceived him by saying that she was the one who saved him, so he had mistreated Albina before.
It seemed to him that he himself owed Albina much more than what the Carballal family owed him.
Thinking of that, he stretched out his arm to hold her tightly in his arms. He rubbed her cheek, and whispered:
-I’m sorry, love, I’m really sorry.
Albina’s face was covered with tears and she hugged him too, all her tears falling on his chest.
She just felt that the world was too small and was going around in circles, unexpectedly, the reality was this.
It turned out that the Espina family had been involved with Umberto and Yolanda for a long time.
After a long while, the two were able to calm down.
Umberto gently wiped the tears on her cheeks with his hand, kissed the corner of her eye and said hoarsely:
-Love, you are the benefactress of the Santangel family, you are also the mistress of my family, whatever I have obviously belongs to you. In the future I promise you that I will treat you like a princess, and I will never betray you or fail you.
Albina’s eyes were very red, and her eyelids were swollen because she had cried so much.
-You must remember your promise, that you will treat me well in the future.
He nodded.
Actions would prove much more than words. When they married, he would sign a prenuptial agreement. If he betrayed Albina, all the Santangel family properties would be his, meaning he would keep nothing.
-By the way, no wonder Saul looked familiar.
After she came to, she remembered Saul, who pretended to be Umberto’s savior. She patted the palm of her own hand.
-From a certain angle, he looked a lot like my dad, but he looked completely different from the front. It was just a moment’s angle. No wonder I hadn’t been able to tell.
The main thing was that her father had been dead a long time, and she hadn’t seen him for many years, so she couldn’t tell at first.
When she finished speaking, she raised her head and looked at Umberto.
-Since we know that the person who truly saved your life was my father, then what are you going to do with this con man?