Chapter 4 - The Night of the Wolves
Creeping through a thirty-foot dirt tunnel at sixty-five years old is not an easy task. My knees throbbed, my hands were caked in cold mud, and my silk blouse—the one I had put on that morning expecting a normal day—was ruined. But as I emerged from behind the heavy wooden lattice of the potting shed into the dark, rain-swept courtyard, I felt a sensation I hadn't experienced in years.
I felt alive.
The storm was at its peak. Sheets of grey rain swept across the manicured lawn, rattling the leaves of the old walnut tree and washing over the stone fountain. Above us, the grand two-story estate loomed against the dark sky, its windows glowing with warm, golden light.
Through the large French doors of the formal dining room, we could see them.
Mateo was sitting at the long mahogany table—the table where we had celebrated every Christmas, every birthday, every family victory for forty years. Spread out before him were dozens of legal documents, land surveys, and bank ledgers. He held a glass of scotch in his right hand, his face pale and haggard, his fingers twitching nervously as he read through a document.
Lidia stood over him. She was dressed in an elegant cream-colored cashmere sweater, holding a pen in one hand and her phone in the other. Her face was flushed with an intense, manic energy. Through the rain-slicked glass, we could see her speaking sharply, gesturing toward the papers, coaxing and pressuring him to keep reading, to keep signing.
Ricardo and I stood beneath the deep overhang of the potting shed, sheltered from the downpour, watching our son sell his soul in real-time.
"Look at them," I whispered, shivering despite the shelter. "They look like vultures hovering over a body."
"Vultures only eat what is already dead, Elena," Ricardo replied, his voice cold and steady beside me. "They made the mistake of thinking we were corpses. But we are still the masters of this house."
He reached into his coat and pulled out his primary smartphone—the one Mateo thought he had confiscated when he took my purse from the kitchen counter. Ricardo had kept his second phone hidden in his inner suit pocket. He opened the camera app, set it to 4K video recording, and zoomed in on the dining room window.
Through the glass, the scene was crystal clear.
Lidia walked over to a leather briefcase sitting on the sideboard. She pulled out a blue folder—the notarized property transfer forms that required our signatures—and set it in front of Mateo. She handed him a pen.
Mateo hesitated. He set his scotch glass down, buried his face in his hands, and shook his head. We could see his mouth moving—he was arguing, resisting, the last faint embers of his conscience fighting against his wife's demands.
Lidia didn't yell. She leaned down, her face inches from his, her fingers gripping his shoulder with a force that made his posture slump. She pulled a document from her own folder—a bank notice stamped with red letters. Mateo's debt statement.
She pointed to the red numbers. Then she pointed to the signature line on the property transfer.
Mateo looked at the pen in his hand. He lowered it to the paper.
"He's doing it," I breathed, a fresh surge of grief threatening to break my composure. "He's forging your name."
"Let him," Ricardo said, his thumb holding the record button steady on the phone screen. "Every stroke of that pen adds five years to his sentence. Record everything."
On the dining room table, Mateo pressed the pen to the paper. We watched through the rain as he carefully, painstakingly imitated his father's signature on the primary property deed transfer, handing each completed page to Lidia, who checked them with greedy satisfaction before stamping them with a notary seal she had illegally obtained from her uncle's office.
Page after page. Deed after deed. The house. The coffee orchards in Uruapan. The commercial store property on Avenida Madero.
In twenty minutes, they signed away forty years of our hard work, transferring every asset into a newly formed corporate shell account registered under Lidia's maiden name.
When the final page was stamped, Lidia picked up the stack of papers, hugged them to her chest, and let out a triumphant laugh. She leaned down and kissed Mateo on the top of his head. Mateo didn't smile. He sat staring at his hands, looking hollowed out, like a man who had just watched his own execution.
Ricardo lowered the phone and stopped the recording. He saved the file to a cloud server using his encrypted satellite connection, ensuring that even if the phone were destroyed, the evidence was immortal.
"It is done," Ricardo said softly. "The crime is complete."
He checked his watch. The hands read 8:45 PM.
"Gabriel will be here in fifteen minutes," Ricardo noted. "It's time for us to go inside."
I looked at him in surprise. "Go inside? Ricardo, the house is locked!"
"The house has five entrances, Elena," Ricardo smiled faintly. "And unlike our guests... I know where the spare keys are buried."
He led me around the side of the house toward the conservatory entrance. From beneath a stone planter shaped like a lion's head, he retrieved a heavy brass key. He inserted it into the lock of the glass doors.
May you like
The lock turned silently.
We stepped out of the storm and into the warm, scented air of the house we had built—two ghosts returning to claim what was rightfully ours.
