Chapter 3 - The Desperate Counter-Attack
The next forty-eight hours in the Portales neighborhood were a masterclass in toxic desperation.
Deprived of his violent brother and stripped of his illusion of ownership, Iván tried every weapon in the manipulator’s handbook.
First came the tearful pleas.
He called Renata’s phone sixty-two times on Wednesday night. When she blocked his number, he began texting her from Brenda’s phone, sending long, pathetic paragraphs promising that he would make Saúl apologize, that he would force his family to pay rent, that he would take her on a vacation to Cancún if she just dropped the charges and let them stay.
Renata didn't read them. She spent Wednesday night at Jimena’s guest apartment, sitting on the sofa while Mateo drew pictures of colorful trains on a pad of paper. For the first time in three years, Renata’s shoulders didn't ache from stress. For the first time in three years, she didn't have to listen to Doña Lucha complaining about the salt in the soup or Saúl’s heavy boots stomping across the living room at midnight.
When tearful pleas failed, the Morales family turned to their favorite strategy: emotional warfare and social sabotage.
On Thursday morning, Doña Lucha went to the dental clinic where Renata worked as a lead administrative assistant.
The clinic was a high-end practice in the Coyoacán district, quiet, immaculate, filled with classical music and wealthy patients waiting for their appointments.
At 10:30 AM, the glass front doors flew open, and Doña Lucha marched into the waiting room, flanked by Brenda and her two children. Doña Lucha had dressed herself in her oldest, most ragged sweater, her hair intentionally messy, holding a handkerchief to her eyes.
“Where is she?!” Doña Lucha wailed at the top of her lungs, causing three patients in the waiting room to jump in their seats. “Where is the heartless woman who is throwing an old, sick mother out onto the street?!”
Renata emerged from the administrative office holding a stack of patient files. When she saw her mother-in-law standing in the middle of the lobby, causing a scene, her stomach tightened—but she didn't panic.
“Renata!” Doña Lucha shrieked, falling dramatically onto one of the velvet waiting chairs, sobbing loudly. “Have you no fear of God?! My son Saúl is in a cold cell because of your lies! My poor grandchildren have no roof! You want us to die in the cold dust of the street? Is that what your parents taught you?!”
Dr. Morales (no relation), the chief dentist and owner of the practice, stepped out of his treatment room, his brow furrowed in deep concern.
“Renata? What is happening here?”
Before Renata could answer, Doña Lucha scrambled to her feet and rushed toward the chief dentist, grabbing his white coat.
“Doctor! You must fire this woman!” Doña Lucha cried. “She is a criminal! She betrayed her husband! She put her own family in prison! She uses the money she makes here to starve her mother-in-law!”
Five months earlier, this scene would have destroyed Renata. She would have wept with shame, begged for forgiveness, and dragged her mother-in-law out the door while apologizing to everyone in sight.
Instead, Renata handed the patient files smoothly to a colleague, walked over to the front desk, and pressed a button on the intercom.
“Security,” Renata said in a clear, professional tone. “Please come to the main lobby. We have three trespassers causing a disturbance.”
She then turned to face Doña Lucha, stepping close enough that only the older woman could hear her.
“Doña Lucha,” Renata whispered, her voice smooth and hard as diamond. “I have spent three years paying for your high blood pressure medication, your orthopedic shoes, and your eye doctor visits. I have receipts for every single peso. If you do not walk out of this building right now, my lawyer will file a civil lawsuit against you for harassment and defamation before lunch. And I will personally ensure the judge freezes the small pension check your late husband left you.”
Doña Lucha froze. Her fake sobs caught in her throat.
She looked at Renata’s eyes. There was no fear there. No guilt. No hesitation. The quiet, obedient girl who used to iron Saúl’s shirts and bow her head at the dinner table was completely gone. In her place stood a woman who owned her life, her money, and her future.
Two tall security guards entered the lobby. Doña Lucha backed away, grabbing Brenda’s arm, her mouth trembling with genuine, bitter fury.
“You are a monster, Renata,” Doña Lucha hissed, spatting on the shiny tile floor near Renata’s shoes. “God will judge you!”
“God already judged this house, Doña Lucha,” Renata replied calmly. “And He gave me the deed.”
By Thursday afternoon, the Morales family’s legal counter-attack collapsed before it even reached a courtroom.
Iván had taken his remaining savings—fifteen hundred pesos he had hidden in a sock under the bed—and hired a shady, low-rent legal advisor who operated out of a plastic booth near the magistrate’s office.
The lawyer, a sleazy man named Licenciado Trejo, called Jimena Ramos at 4:00 PM, trying to bluff his way through the phone.
“Listen, Licenciada Ramos,” Trejo said, chewing on a toothpick. “My client, Señor Iván Morales, has rights. They have been married for four years. Under the concept of Concubinato y Uso Familiar, he has a right to possess the primary marital residence. If your client tries to throw them out tomorrow, we will file an injunction—an amparo—and lock the property up in litigation for five years.”
Jimena leaned back in her leather chair, laughing softly into the receiver.
“Licenciado Trejo,” Jimena said smoothly. “Did you actually read the documents, or did you just take your client’s fifteen hundred pesos and guess?”
“Of course I read them!” Trejo snapped.
“Then you know,” Jimena continued, her tone dropping into lethal precision, “that the property was acquired by my client two full years prior to the marriage under separate property rights. You also know that there is an active criminal protective order issued under Case File 04-2026 for aggravated domestic violence, which explicitly mandates the physical exclusion of the aggressor and his immediate family line to protect the victim.”
Silence on the line.
“Furthermore,” Jimena added, leaning forward, “if you file a frivolous amparo based on fraudulent claims of marital property, I will personally file a complaint against your legal license with the Barra Mexicana de Abogados for professional misconduct and bad-faith litigation. Would you like to test me, Licenciado?”
There was a long pause. Through the phone, Jimena heard the sound of Licenciado Trejo spitting his toothpick into a plastic cup.
“...My client did not inform me of the criminal protective order,” Trejo muttered flatly.
“Then I suggest you tell your client to start buying cardboard moving boxes,” Jimena said, and clicked off the line.
At 7:00 PM that evening, Iván sat on the sidewalk outside a convenience store two blocks from the apartment, holding a paper bag containing a cold tamale.
Licenciado Trejo had just called him back to terminate his representation, telling him that if he stepped foot back inside that apartment after Friday at 2:00 PM, he would be thrown into the same jail cell as his brother Saúl.
Iván looked up at the sky. The winter smog had returned, thick and grey. He pulled out his phone and opened his photo gallery.
Scroll down. Two years ago: a photo of Renata smiling brightly, wearing a white paper chef’s hat, holding a tray of freshly baked lemon tarts she had made to sell at the weekend market—tarts she had baked until two in the morning to save the final down payment money for the Portales apartment. Beside her in the photo was Iván, smiling proudly, his arm wrapped around her waist.
He remembered what she had whispered to him that night when she handed the check to the notary: “We did it, Iván. We finally have a home of our own. Nobody can ever throw us out.”
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He hadn't built that home. She had. And when his family came in like locusts, eating her food, insulting her work, and finally striking her face, he had chosen to stand with the locusts.
Iván put his face in his hands and began to cry, his sobs swallowed by the roaring traffic of Calzada de Tlalpan.
