My name is Pablo Ritter, and on the coldest night of my life, I gave away the only thing standing between me and hypothermia to a stranger on a park bench. At the time, I thought I was simply doing what any decent human being would do. I had no idea I was setting in motion a chain of events that would completely transform my existence.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. To understand why that single act of kindness mattered so much, you need to understand how far I’d fallen.
Six months earlier, I’d been a thirty-six-year-old offshore oil rig engineer with what I thought was a stable life in Texas. I had a good job with Harlo Energy Group, a wife I loved, a six-year-old son named Nasir who made every sacrifice worthwhile, and a comfortable two-story house on the outskirts of Houston with a small garden I tended on my days off.
The work was brutal—weeks at a time on drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, surrounded by nothing but ocean and machinery, the constant roar of equipment and the smell of oil and salt water. The isolation wore on me. The danger was real. But the pay was good, and I told myself I was building something for my family, giving my son opportunities I’d never had.
My wife Regina worked in public relations for an advertising firm. She was beautiful, ambitious, and increasingly dissatisfied with a husband who was gone more than he was home. I see that now. At the time, I was blind to everything except my determination to provide.
I should have seen the signs. The way she started dressing differently. The late nights at “client meetings.” The distance that grew between us even when I was home. But I was too focused on work, too trusting, too naive to imagine that my wife and my boss were having an affair right under my nose.
The day everything collapsed started like a gift. There’d been a technical failure on the rig—a faulty pressure valve that required extensive repairs. The whole crew was sent home early while maintenance teams handled it. I drove back to Houston excited to surprise Regina and Nasir, stopping at a florist to buy roses and at a toy store to get my son a model airplane he’d been wanting.
I pulled up to our house around three in the afternoon, earlier than I’d been home in months. The front door was slightly ajar, and I could hear sounds from inside—voices, laughter, something that made my stomach tighten with an inexplicable dread.
I walked in quietly, the bouquet of roses in one hand, the toy airplane in the other, and my entire world shattered in the space of ten seconds.
Through the crack in our bedroom door, I saw my wife wrapped around Case Harlo, the forty-five-year-old CEO of Harlo Energy Group. The man who signed my paychecks. The man I’d respected and feared in equal measure. They were naked, entangled, completely absorbed in each other.
The roses fell from my hand. I don’t remember making the decision to move—my body simply reacted. I kicked the door open and yanked Case off my wife with strength I didn’t know I possessed.
What followed was chaos. Case shoved me hard against the wall. My head hit the corner of the nightstand, and blood ran down my forehead, but I barely felt it. The physical pain was nothing compared to the anguish tearing through my chest.
“Why?” I shouted, the word coming out as a broken sob. “Why are you doing this?”
Regina didn’t even try to explain. She grabbed a sheet to cover herself and stood in front of Case as if I were the intruder, the threat, the problem.
“Pablo, you need to leave,” she said, her voice cold and steady.
Case adjusted his clothes with infuriating calm, a contemptuous smile playing on his lips. “You’re just a low-level employee, Pablo. No money, no status, no value. I’m the one who can give Regina the life she wants.”
His words cut deeper than any physical blow. I looked at my wife—the woman I’d worked myself to exhaustion for, the mother of my child—and saw nothing but contempt in her eyes.
“I’m tired of this,” Regina said. “Tired of struggling. Tired of being alone while you’re on those rigs. Tired of waiting for a future that never comes. You did this, Pablo. You drove me away.”
I tried to argue, tried to remind her of everything I’d sacrificed, but the words died in my throat when I heard small footsteps in the hallway. Nasir appeared in the doorway, his eyes wide with confusion and fear.
“Daddy? Why are you fighting?”
My heart shattered completely. I picked up my son and carried him to his room, trying to shield him from the destruction of our family, but it was too late. He’d seen enough to know something terrible had happened.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page to discover the rest 🔎👇
