Security escorts Davi away from the ballroom as reporters circle like sharks that smell blood.
Bianca stands alone at the altar, blinking fast, trying not to cry in front of people who’d sell her tears for clicks.
And Lídia, in her wheelchair, is rolled gently out to the terrace, where the ocean wind is cooler and honest.
You follow her outside, not as Davi, not as Bianca, not as a guest.
You follow as someone who can’t pretend they didn’t witness something seismic.
Lídia looks up at the sky, eyes closed, breathing shallowly.
The night air fills her lungs like a small miracle.
“You were brave,” someone whispers, and Lídia shakes her head.
“I was tired,” she corrects. “Tired is what makes you honest.”
Then she lets out a soft laugh that sounds like relief.
“And I still breathe.”
In the weeks after the wedding, Recife becomes a city of whispers and headlines.
Investigations open into Bianca’s foundation.
Davi’s real estate deals are audited, and investors who once called him “visionary” begin calling him “liability.”
His empire doesn’t fall in one day, but it begins to rot from the inside out, because truth is a slow fire.
Lídia uses the ten thousand reais exactly as she planned.
She pays for treatment.
She buys herself time.
She doesn’t waste a cent on revenge.
A local radio station asks to play “Still I Breathe.”
At first she refuses, then she agrees under one condition: all proceeds go to cancer patients who can’t afford care.
The song spreads through Recife like rain after drought.
People hum it on buses. Nurses play it in hospital corridors. Choirs sing it in churches.
And one morning, when you’re standing in line at a pharmacy, you hear a teenage girl humming the chorus softly.
Still I breathe.
Still I stand.
Not for you… but for the hands I promised not to drop.
Lídia becomes something she never chased: a symbol.
Not a perfect one, not a polished one.
A real one.
A woman who refused to be used as a prop in a rich man’s story.
When Davi tries to contact her again, she doesn’t respond.
She doesn’t need the last word.
She already sang it.
Months later, in a small community hall near Olinda, a benefit concert is held for patients.
Lídia doesn’t perform on stage.
She sits in the front row, wrapped in a shawl, cheeks thinner, smile gentler.
Her choir friends sing for her, and when they reach the final chorus, they turn toward her as if offering her own song back like a blessing.
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