Chapter 3 - The Price of a Dynasty
The drive back from Santa Fe to our gated community in Interlomas felt like a slow-motion execution.
I clutched the red folder against my chest like a shield, tears drying into salt streaks across my cheeks. When I finally pulled my battered compact car into the driveway of our sprawling, half-empty colonial-style house, the illusion of wealth was painfully obvious. The manicured lawn was overgrown with weeds because my father had stopped paying the landscaping crew two months ago. The grand double front doors had peeling paint that no one had bothered to fix.
Inside, the house smelled of stale whiskey and quiet desperation.
My father, Roberto Roberto, sat at the head of the mahogany dining table in his silk bathrobe, a half-empty glass of scotch in one hand and a stack of past-due collection notices in the other. His hair was disheveled, his face gray and bloated from stress and alcohol.
My mother, Carmen, sat nearby on the velvet sofa, dabbing her eyes with a lace handkerchief, her heart monitor beeping with an irregular, anxious rhythm from the small bedside machine she now required in the living room.
“Valentina!” my father barked the second the front door clicked shut. He stood up so fast his chair screeched against the marble floor. “Thank God. Finally. What took you so long? Did you get the job? What is the starting salary? I told the bank manager we’d have a fifty-thousand-peso wire transfer by this afternoon to cover the interest payment—”
I walked slowly into the dining room, my heels clicking hollowly against the floor. I didn't look at him with the scared, obedient submission I had practiced my entire life. I looked at him the way an executioner looks at a condemned prisoner.
I dropped the red folder onto the center of the table, right on top of his collection notices.
Roberto blinked, frowning deeply. “What is this? Is this your employment contract? Why is it red?”
“Open it, Dad,” I said, my voice eerily calm.
My mother looked up from the sofa, her voice trembling. “Valentina, why are you speaking to your father that way? What happened at Grupo Corporativo Azteca?”
Roberto snatched the folder open. His eyes scanned the first page—the corporate letterhead, the legal seals, the itemized list of his hidden offshore loans and fraudulent property liens. As his eyes moved down to the second page—the old police report from Coyoacán—all the color drained completely from his face.
His knees buckled. He grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“Where... where did you get this?” he whispered, his voice pitching into a panicked squeak. “Who gave you this? This is confidential! This is fifteen years old!”
“It came from the CEO,” I said, stepping closer to the table. “The owner of Grupo Corporativo Azteca. Do you remember him, Dad? Do you remember the boy you beat, framed, and threw out into the streets of Coyoacán because he stood in our courtyard and told my seven-year-old self he cared about me?”
Roberto’s jaw dropped. A cold sweat broke out across his forehead. “No... no, that’s impossible. That orphan... that dirty little rat from the rooftop... he’s dead. He must be dead.”
“He’s not dead,” I said, a bitter laugh escaping my lips. “He owns the tallest tower in Santa Fe. And his name is Mateo Santos.”
My mother let out a piercing shriek from the sofa, clutching her chest as her heart monitor began to beep at a frantic, high-pitched frequency.
“Mateo?” Carmen gasped, her eyes wide with unadulterated terror. “That boy? He’s the billionaire? Roberto, you fool! I told you we should have paid him off quietly! I told you destroying him would come back to haunt us!”
“Shut up, Carmen!” Roberto roared, panic overriding his shock as he lunged across the table and grabbed my shoulders. His fingers dug into my flesh with a violence that felt sickeningly familiar. “Valentina, listen to me! You have to go back there! You’re a beautiful young woman—use your charms! Beg him! Sleep with him if you have to! Tell him you’ll be his mistress, his wife, whatever he wants! Just get him to drop the charges! If the federal banking commission sees these files tomorrow morning, we’re going to federal prison for financial fraud!”
I looked down at my father’s hands clutching my shoulders—the same hands that had built an empire on lies, intimidation, and cruelty.
Without a word, I reached up, grabbed his wrists, and ripped his hands away from my body with a strength I didn't know I possessed.
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Roberto staggered backward, staring at me in sheer disbelief.
“The game is over, Dad,” I said softly, turning toward the stairs. “You spent my entire life teaching me that money is the only thing that matters in this world. Well, Mateo learned that lesson better than any of us. And tomorrow morning, I’m not going back to beg him to save you. I’m going back to watch you fall.”
