Chapter 4 - The Boardroom War
By two o'clock that afternoon, the glass-and-steel monolith of Mendoza Urban Development on Reforma Avenue looked like a fortress under siege.
Black-and-white federal police vehicles were parked haphazardly across the VIP drop-off zone. Uniformed investigators carrying heavy cardboard boxes were streaming through the revolving glass doors, while reporters and camera crews swarmed the plaza, shouting questions about corruption, fraud, and corporate embezzlement.
I walked through the entrance flanked by David Garza and two federal judicial officers. The security guards at the front desk didn’t even try to stop us; they were too busy watching their corporate executives being escorted out in handcuffs.
We rode the private elevator straight to the forty-second floor—the executive suite where Jorge Mendoza reigned supreme.
When the elevator doors slid open, the atmosphere was chaotic. Executive assistants were frantically shredding documents into noisy industrial bins, while junior vice presidents argued on their cell phones.
In the center of the vast, sunlit boardroom, Jorge Mendoza stood alone at the head of the mahogany conference table. He looked older than his years, his silver hair uncombed, his expensive Italian suit rumpled, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the city he had ruled for decades.
He turned slowly as I walked into the room.
“Fernando’s boy,” Jorge said, his voice raspy, devoid of the theatrical arrogance he displayed in financial magazines. “I would have recognized those eyes anywhere. You have your father’s stubborn, unyielding jaw.”
“You didn’t just kill my father, Jorge,” I said, stopping ten feet away from him. “You tried to bury his entire family so you could sleep comfortably in a penthouse built on stolen blood.”
Jorge let out a dry, humorless chuckle, shaking his head. “Business in the nineties was a war, Alejandro. Your father was too soft, too principled to survive the sharks. I built this company into a titan. I brought billions in foreign investment to this city. What did your father ever do besides draw pretty lines on paper?”
“He drew the foundation upon which every single building you own currently stands,” I replied coldly, tossing the original partnership charter onto the mahogany table. “And today, the foundation crumbles.”
Jorge glanced down at the document, his hands resting heavily on the table. He didn't pick it up. He already knew what it was.
“Your wife, Karina, was a disappointment,” Jorge muttered, looking back out the window. “We thought she could manage you, keep you quiet while we legally acquired the Coyoacán tract through administrative loopholes. But greed runs in families, I suppose. Her father was too sloppy with the wire transfers.”
“Where is Karina?” I asked.
“Detained at the airport trying to board a private flight to Miami,” Jorge said calmly. “Her father abandoned her the moment the federal warrants dropped. Politics is a cold mistress, Alejandro—something neither you nor your father ever truly understood.”
The double doors of the boardroom swung open with a crash.
Two federal prosecutors, accompanied by armed federal marshals, marched into the room. The lead prosecutor stopped in front of Jorge Mendoza, holding a formal arrest warrant.
“Jorge Mendoza, you are under arrest for corporate fraud, money laundering, interstate wire fraud, and the suspected homicide of Fernando Ruiz in 1989,” the prosecutor announced, his voice echoing off the glass walls.
May you like
Jorge didn’t resist. He slowly extended his hands, allowing the cold steel of the handcuffs to lock around his wrists. As the marshals led him past me toward the elevators, he paused for a fraction of a second, looking me directly in the eye.
“You won the corporate war, Alejandro,” he whispered quietly. “Let’s see if you can survive the peace.”
