Chapter 1 - The Red Folder
The air inside the luxury boardroom of Grupo Corporativo Azteca had turned to liquid ice.
Forty-two floors above Santa Fe, the panoramic glass walls offered a breathtaking view of Mexico City wrapped in a hazy afternoon smog, but none of the senior directors dared look outside. Every eye in the room was locked on the head of the mahogany table, where Mateo Santos stood like a statue carved from obsidian and vengeance.
The red folder lay open before me.
My own name—Valentina Roberto—was typed in crisp, clinical black letters across the top sheet. Beneath it lay the official police report from fifteen years ago, bearing my father’s signature, accusing a seventeen-year-old orphan of grand larceny. And beside that, a faded photograph of a terrified, bruised boy standing outside a precinct in Coyoacán, clutching a torn jacket with his knuckles bleeding.
The silence in the room was so absolute that the low hum of the centralized air conditioning sounded like a gathering storm.
“Mr. Santos,” the senior hiring director stammered, his voice trembling as he half-stood from his ergonomic leather chair. “Is there... is there a problem with the candidate’s credentials? Her portfolio is—relative to our corporate standards—exceptionally qualified—”
Mateo did not look at the director. He did not blink. His dark, impenetrable eyes remained fixed entirely on me, burning with a fire that fifteen years of exile, suffering, and relentless ambition had only intensified.
“There is no problem with her credentials, Director Morales,” Mateo said, his voice a low, rhythmic baritone that sent a shiver straight down my spine. “In fact, Señorae-Madrina Roberto is uniquely qualified for this corporation. She possesses something rare in Santa Fe: a direct, firsthand education in how families like hers build their fortunes on the backs of children they throw into the dirt.”
The directors exchanged panicked, confused glances. They were high-priced executives, men and women accustomed to corporate takeovers, hostile market maneuvers, and ruthless boardroom politics, but they had no idea what personal vendetta was unfolding in front of them. They only knew that the billionaire owner of the conglomerate—a man who rarely deigned to step foot in a preliminary interview room—had just walked in and detonated a bomb.
My throat felt like it had been scraped raw with sandpaper.
“Mateo,” I whispered, the name slipping past my lips before I could stop it.
At the sound of his childhood name—the name whispered in secret in our old courtyard while the neighborhood gossiped below—a muscle twitched sharply along his jawline.
He leaned forward, placing both hands flat on the mahogany table, invading my space without ever touching me.
“That name died in Coyoacán fifteen years ago, Valentina,” he murmured softly, so quietly that only I could hear. “Up here, I am Mateo Santos. Founder and principal shareholder of Grupo Corporativo Azteca. And you are just another desperate applicant standing in my building, begging for crumbs to bail out a thief.”
“My father is not—” I started, my defensive instincts flashing, but the words died in my throat as Mateo slid the red folder an inch closer to my trembling fingers.
“Look at the signature, Valentina,” he commanded, his voice dropping into a register of absolute authority.
I forced my eyes down. There it was. Roberto Roberto—my father’s unmistakable, looping signature, scrawled across a document swearing under penalty of perjury that Mateo Santos had stolen fifteen thousand pesos from our family safe on the night of October 14th.
I remembered that night.
I remembered the sirens echoing through the narrow cobblestone streets of Coyoacán. I remembered my mother locking me in my bedroom while men in uniform shouted downstairs. And I remembered waking up the next morning to find Mateo’s rooftop room completely empty, his single wooden crate smashed in the courtyard, his faded jacket discarded in the mud like garbage.
“I didn't know,” I breathed, tears pricking the corners of my eyes as I looked up at him. “Mateo, I swear to God, I didn't know. My father told me you ran away. He told me you got tired of us, that you stole the money and fled—”
“And you believed him?” Mateo interrupted, a bitter, humorless smile touching his lips. “You, who stood in the middle of that courtyard and swore you’d marry me? You believed that a boy who had nothing in the world except a stack of borrowed schoolbooks and a coat too small for his shoulders would risk the only sanctuary he had to steal cash he didn't even know how to spend?”
“I was seven years old!” I cried out, the desperation finally breaking through my professional composure, drawing sharp intakes of breath from the surrounding directors. “I was a child! What was I supposed to do against my parents? They lied to me!”
Mateo straightened up slowly. The cold mask returned, shutting away whatever flicker of human agony had momentarily surfaced in his eyes.
He looked around the boardroom, addressing the petrified executives.
“The interview is concluded,” Mateo announced, his voice echoing off the glass walls. “Leave us.”
In less than ten seconds, the room was entirely empty. The directors practically tripped over themselves scrambling toward the double glass doors, pulling them shut and sealing us inside a bubble of suspended time.
The heavy silence rushed back in, broken only by the faint hum of the city far below.
May you like
Mateo walked slowly around the mahogany table, his tailored Italian shoes clicking against the parquet floor with measured, deliberate precision. He stopped just behind my chair, leaning down until his breath brushed against my ear.
“You came here today to save your parents from five million pesos in debt,” Mateo whispered, his voice like silk wrapped around steel. “You thought you were walking into a temple of opportunity. But you walked straight into a trap, Valentina. And this time, nobody is coming to save you.”
