I Have Three Months Left—Marry Me, and Everything Will Be Yours

At seventy-three, Don Alejandro Ruiz had long accepted a life measured in routines and silence. Since his wife María passed sixteen years ago, his grand estate, La Esperanza Final, had become a hollow shell—meals eaten alone, hallways echoing only his footsteps, and laughter nothing more than a memory.

The townspeople respected him, feared him slightly, and whispered about the lonely landowner. He wasn’t cruel, just tired—tired of life without companionship.

Then came Lucía Moreno. Twenty-four, penniless, and dignified, she arrived seeking work. She needed shelter; he needed meals that weren’t dust-flavored. She cooked, cleaned, and slowly, without trying, breathed life back into the house. Windows opened, flowers appeared, and laughter—small, gentle—returned.

Don Alejandro found himself waiting for her greetings, her questions, her song. He didn’t realize he had started to hope again… until the doctor’s news: advanced stomach cancer. Three months, perhaps four.

That evening, over Lucía’s simmering stew, he finally spoke:

“Lucía… I have three months. Marry me. Everything will be yours.”

She froze. Not out of fear for him, but disbelief.

“I’m not asking for love,” he admitted. “Just companionship. Someone to hold my hand.”

Three days later, Lucía returned.

“I accept,” she said. “But not as a contract. If I am your wife, it will be real.”

The town whispered: gold digger, desperate old man.

Yet their bond deepened. They shared meals, conversation, and care. When Don Alejandro’s health worsened, Lucía stayed—choosing him, not for land or security, but for love she had quietly felt for years.

Even when Don Alejandro questioned her motives, she was honest: she needed money, yes—but she refused anyone who tried to “buy” her. She chose him.

Miraculously, his tumor shrank. Months turned into years—seven full, precious years of life, love, and partnership. When death eventually returned, it did so in peace: he held her hand.

Lucía remained, building schools, clinics, and funds for families in debt.

“I already knew the sun,” she said. “Why chase shadows?”

And so, a scandal became a lesson: love is measured not by time, but by courage—the courage to choose each other when the world insists it shouldn’t work.