Chapter 3 - The Conspiracy of Shadows
At 6:00 AM on Saturday morning, the fog over the lake of Valle de Bravo was thick and white, swallowing the docks and the hulls of the speedboats. Inside the villa, the air was stale, smelling of cold ash, spilled liquor, and expensive perfume. Alejandro woke up on the leather sofa, a massive, throbbing headache pulsing behind his eyes.
He groaned, sitting up and rubbing his face. His phone lay on the coffee table next to an empty bottle of tequila. He picked it up, intending to check the time, and flipped the airplane mode off.
The device instantly went into a state of digital convulsions.
Dozens of notifications flooded the screen all at once. Sixty-four missed calls from Lucía. Eighteen missed calls from his own mother, Doña Elena. Over forty WhatsApp messages from unknown numbers, and several emails from the legal department of his residential complex.
Alejandro’s brow furrowed, his hangover-addled brain struggling to process the sheer volume of data. Before he could click on a single message, the phone began to ring again. The caller ID showed his mother’s name.
"Mom?" Alejandro answered, his voice thick with sleep. "What’s going on? Why is everyone calling me like the world is ending?"
On the other end of the line, Doña Elena did not sound like her usual aristocratic, composed self. Her voice was high-pitched, sharp with an intense, calculated panic. "Alejandro! Where the hell have you been?! Why was your phone off?!"
"I told you, Mom, it was my birthday weekend, I wanted some peace—"
"Peace?! Your peace just cost us everything!" Elena hissed, her voice dropping into a frantic whisper. "Mariana is in the hospital! She almost died last night, Alejandro! Her sister found her bleeding out on the floor of the nursery!"
Alejandro’s heart did a sudden, violent flip against his ribs. The memory of Mariana brushing against his linen pants, begging for an ambulance, flashed behind his eyes like a bolt of lightning. "Is... is she okay? Is the baby okay?"
"The baby is fine, Lucía has him. But Mariana had to have emergency surgery. They took her uterus, Alejandro! She can't have any more children!" Elena slammed her hand against a table on her end. "But that's not the worst part. Lucía is out of her mind with rage. She has already contacted a criminal lawyer. She’s planning to file formal charges against you for criminal negligence and abandonment of a vulnerable person! Do you understand what that means for your career? For our family name? You could go to prison, Alejandro!"
Alejandro felt a cold, slimy wave of terror wash over his stomach, completely burning away the remaining alcohol in his system. "Prison? No, that’s ridiculous! It was a medical complication! I didn't know she was actually sick! She was always complaining—"
"It doesn't matter what you knew!" Elena interrupted sharply. "The neighbors saw the ambulance. Lucía has photographs of the nursery floor covered in blood. If this goes to a judge, you are ruined. Your corporate real estate license will be revoked, and your father's partners will dump you from the firm within an hour."
Alejandro gripped the phone, his breathing coming in short, panicked gasps. "What do I do, Mom? Help me."
Elena paused, her mind working with the cold, predatory calculation that had kept her at the top of Mexico City’s high society for decades. "Listen to me very carefully. Lucía is currently at the Hospital Español. Mariana is in a coma. We need to move first. You need to get back to Lomas Verdes right now. Clean that house. Do not leave a single drop of blood on that carpet. If there is no evidence of a crime scene inside the home, it’s just her word against yours regarding whether you knew she was sick."
"Okay... okay, I can do that," Alejandro stammered, pulling on his shoes with shaking hands.
"And another thing," Elena continued, her voice turning into ice. "While Mariana is incapacitated, we need to secure the assets. The house in Lomas Verdes is registered under a joint trust, but the bank accounts are under your name. I am already at your house with a moving truck. We are going to pack up the baby's things, Mariana’s jewelry, and the important legal documents. If she wants a war, we will leave her with nothing to fight with. We will claim she had a mental breakdown postpartum and abandoned the home herself."
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Alejandro stood up, his face pale, his eyes wide with a desperate, cowardly resolve. "I'm leaving Valle de Bravo now, Mom. I'll be there in an hour and a half."
He didn't even bother to wake up his friends or say goodbye to the girls sleeping in the guest rooms. He grabbed his truck keys, sprinted to his SUV, and tore out of the villa’s driveway, his tires screaming against the gravel as he launched a desperate campaign to erase the truth.
