The sea was calm that morning in Koh Lipe, so serene it seemed to bless the honeymoon Sofia had imagined for years. Her husband, Julian, walked beside her with a smile she mistook for happiness, but which actually concealed something much darker. The wedding photos were still fresh on social media; their families were still receiving congratulatory messages. Sofia believed they were starting a life together. He knew he was about to end it.

“Hello, shark,” Julian joked, pointing at the crystal-clear water. Sofia laughed, suspecting nothing. She had never imagined that this would be one of the last things she would hear before feeling death breathing down her neck.

The guide who was supposed to accompany them on the dive had received an urgent message and had left for a few minutes. They were alone on the floating platform. Sofia adjusted her fins while Julian looked around, making sure no one was watching them.
“Ready?” she asked.
“More than ready,” he replied.

When Sofia inflated her life jacket to enter the water, Julian took a step back, took a deep breath, and pushed her with all the strength he’d held back for years of hypocrisy. It was so fast she didn’t even have time to scream. The impact stunned her, and she fell backward, sliding beneath the surface. She tried to steady herself, but felt a hand snatch the regulator from her mouth. Water rushed in. She swallowed. She kicked desperately, gasping for air, searching for Julian. He was still up there, watching her sink.

The current swept her away from the platform. Sofia thought she would die, but a local fisherman saw her floating unconscious and rescued her. When she awoke, she couldn’t speak; her body was weak, and her mind even more so. The man who saved her didn’t speak Spanish, but he managed to get her to the nearest hospital. There, without documents—because Julián had taken them—without money, and without strength, Sofia wrote on a piece of paper the only thing she remembered: “My husband tried to kill me.”

Local police tried to contact Julián, but he had already taken a flight back to Argentina and reported Sofía as “missing at sea,” crying in front of the cameras, hugging his lover: Camila.

Sofia, officially considered dead, understood that returning to her former self would be pointless. If she wanted justice, she had to rebuild herself from scratch. And she did.

Three years later, a woman with a completely different look entered Buenos Aires. She had short hair, a thin scar on her neck, and a perfectly calculated plan.
“Now then, hello, shark,” she murmured, ready to collect every debt.

Three years had taught Sofia patience. How to survive. How to stop being the trusting woman who thought love was enough to sustain a marriage. In Thailand, while recovering from her injuries, she discovered that Julian had never been the man she thought she knew. There were hidden debts, shady dealings, and, above all, an affair that began long before the wedding. The honeymoon wasn’t an accident: it was a plan.

Sofia’s family, persuaded by the Argentine authorities, had held a symbolic funeral. Her mother never got over the loss. Julián attended, feigning tears, while Camila squeezed his hand from the third row.

Sofia had watched the videos of that funeral hundreds of times. Rage was a slow but steady poison. When she finally managed to return with a new identity—thanks to the help of the fisherman and an NGO that supported undocumented foreign victims—nothing remained of the naive young woman who had traveled to celebrate love. Now she was a woman whose life revolved around a single word: justice.

The first thing she did upon arriving in Buenos Aires was to keep an eye on Julián. She observed what he believed he had gained: a comfortable life, a new apartment, a promotion at the company where he worked thanks to “a tragic stroke of luck,” as his colleagues put it. Camila had moved in with him two years earlier. They had both erased Sofía from their public memories. To the world, she was a poor victim of the sea. To them, an obstacle eliminated.

But Sofia wasn’t there just to observe. She started with small moves. She approached Julian’s building and spoke to the new doorman, posing as a sociology student researching “post-bereavement behaviors.” The man, unsuspecting, told her details about schedules, visits, and routines. Then, Sofia created a fake profile to infiltrate Julian’s professional circle. She observed him sending emails, manipulating figures, and concealing risky decisions within the company. She realized that, in addition to being a murderer, Julian was a professional fraud waiting for his downfall.

The first crack appeared one afternoon when Sofía left an anonymous note on his car: “No one drowns forever.” Julián paled. Camila thought it was a bad joke, but he began to lose control. He remembered—as if from a ghost—Sofía’s last look as the water swallowed her.

For weeks, Sofía sowed seeds of doubt. Mysterious emails, messages from unknown numbers, photos from the beach where he pushed her. Julián began to suspect everyone, even Camila. Their relationship slowly deteriorated.

But Sofia didn’t just want to scare him. She wanted to destroy him legally, socially, and emotionally. For that, she needed proof. And Julian would give it to her.

One night, while following him, she saw him enter a bar where he was meeting with a businessman under investigation for money laundering. Sofia recorded every minute. The puzzle was beginning to come together.

The most important piece was still missing: confronting Camila. Because for Julián to fall completely, Sofía needed his lover to talk too.

And she knew exactly how to break her.

Camila had always been Julián’s weak spot. Sofía knew it even before the wedding, when she suspected infidelity but was never able to confirm it. Now, with distance and clarity, she understood that Camila wasn’t just a lover: she was an unwitting accomplice to murder.

One afternoon, Sofia followed Camila to the café where she worked as a freelance designer. She sat down two tables away. When Camila glanced in her direction, Sofia tilted her head so the light wouldn’t reveal her features. She had changed physically, but her eyes were still the same, and Sofia didn’t want to take any chances.

She left an envelope on the counter while Camila took a call. Inside was a printed copy of an email between Julián and a business partner where they discussed the “day of liberation”—an expression Sofía hadn’t understood at the time, but now knew referred to the day he planned to get rid of her—
and a photo of the platform where the attempted murder had taken place.

Camila opened the envelope as soon as she returned to her table. Sofia watched her reaction: first surprise, then doubt, and finally fear. It was clear she didn’t know that part of the story. Or she was pretending not to.

The next day, Camila called the anonymous number on the envelope.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Someone who knows what Julián did,” Sofía replied, distorting her voice. “And someone who knows what you hid.”

That sentence was enough for Camila to agree to meet. They met in a park; Sofía was wearing a cap and glasses. Camila spoke first.
“Julián said your death was an accident… but you… are you alive?”
“Would you like to know the truth?” Sofía replied, not answering directly.

Camila confessed more than Sofia expected. She said that Julián had forbidden her from going through his things, that she had seen suspicious messages before the wedding, that he had returned from the honeymoon too calm for someone who was a widower, and that for months he would wake up startled in the middle of the night.
“I… I think he did do something to you,” she admitted, crying.

That was the moment Sofia took off her cap.
—Don’t believe it, Camila. I know.

Camila paled.
“Oh my God…” she whispered, stepping back. “I didn’t… I didn’t know…”
“I don’t need you as an enemy,” Sofia said. “I need you as a witness.”

The deal was simple: Camila would hand over all the information she had about Julián, from documents to pre-wedding messages. In exchange, Sofía wouldn’t involve her legally. Camila agreed. Fear had always been a better motivator than guilt.

With the evidence gathered, Sofia went to a lawyer specializing in complex crimes. It took him days to believe that the “dead woman” was actually in front of him. But when he saw the medical records from Thailand and the testimonies from the hospital staff, he understood the magnitude of the case.

A silent investigation was launched. The prosecution requested access to Julián’s emails, and a corruption network within his company was uncovered. Sofía had only sought justice for her attempted murder, but Julián’s downfall was about to reach far greater heights.

On the night of his arrest, Julián received an anonymous call.
“Who’s speaking?” he shouted nervously.
“Hello, shark,” Sofía replied.

He recognized the phrase. He trembled. And, before he could react, the police broke down his door.

Julián was charged with attempted murder, corporate fraud, and racketeering. During questioning, he tried to blame Camila, then associates, and finally rambled about “ghosts of the sea.” Nobody believed him.

On the day of the trial, Sofia entered the courtroom with her head held high. Her mother, upon seeing her, burst into tears. Her family, stunned, took minutes to realize that the woman before them was indeed Sofia.

When she stepped onto the platform, she looked Julián in the eye.
“I didn’t come back for revenge,” she said. “I came back to survive. And so that you don’t destroy anyone else.”

The silence was absolute.

The verdict came hours later: guilty .

As she left the courthouse, the sun illuminating her scarred but resolute face, Sofia took a deep breath. She hadn’t won a war; she had reclaimed her life.

And that, for her, meant everything.