Chapter 7: The One More Thing
She called Patricia after Mateo fell asleep.
"The construction company," Patricia said.
"When Ricardo restructured it and removed your name, he also took out a loan against the company's assets.
A significant one.
The loan is in default.
The creditor has already filed to seize the company's equipment and contracts."
Mariana sat in the bathroom with the door half-closed so the light wouldn't wake Mateo.
"How significant?"
"Enough that the company, as it currently stands, may not survive the seizure.
Ricardo spent the money.
Most of it appears to have gone toward personal expenses.
The watch.
The car.
Renovations to the house — your house — that he had no right to authorize."
"He gutted it."
"He treated it as his personal account for five years.
Yes."
Mariana pressed her back against the cold tile wall.
The construction company had been her father's.
Built from nothing over thirty years.
Her parents had transferred it to her and Ricardo jointly when they married, on the condition that it remain in the family.
Her father had been dead for four years and had not lived to see what Ricardo had done with his life's work.
"What are my options?" she said.
"You can fight the seizure on the grounds that the loan was taken out fraudulently, without your authorization, using a forged power of attorney.
If the court agrees, the loan contract itself may be voided.
The creditor would then pursue Ricardo personally."
"And if the court doesn't move fast enough?"
"Then the seizure proceeds while the case is pending and you spend the next year fighting to recover assets that may already be gone."
Mariana closed her eyes.
"Who is the creditor?"
"A private investment firm.
They may be willing to negotiate a pause on the seizure if you can demonstrate the fraud and show intent to resolve it through legal channels.
It's not guaranteed, but it's worth a conversation."
"Set it up."
"I already have a call scheduled for Monday morning." A pause.
"Mariana.
There's something else."
"You said one more thing."
"This is the one more thing.
The lead engineer at the construction company — a man named Aurelio Vásquez — he's been with the company for nineteen years.
He called my office this afternoon.
He said he's been trying to find a way to reach you for two years.
He said Ricardo told the staff you had abandoned the family and signed the company over voluntarily.
Most of them believed it.
But Aurelio didn't.
He said he kept records.
Financial records, internal communications, project files.
He said Ricardo was diverting company funds into a personal account and falsifying the project invoices to cover it."
Mariana opened her eyes.
"Aurelio kept records," she said.
"Nineteen years with your father and then with you.
He said your father told him once that if anything ever seemed wrong, to document everything and wait.
He said he'd been waiting."
Something tightened in Mariana's chest.
Her father.
Who had built that company with his hands and his stubbornness and his absolute refusal to let anything he'd made be taken from him without a fight.
"Tell Aurelio I want to meet him," she said.
"Tomorrow if he's available."
"He said any time you name."
After she hung up, Mariana sat on the bathroom floor for a while.
Not thinking.
Just breathing.
The hotel hummed around her.
Somewhere down the hall a door closed.
A television murmured through the wall.
She thought about Ricardo sitting in that armchair.
New watch.
New shirt.
The relaxed expression of a man who had enjoyed life far too much.
Five years of her absence converted into five years of spending what wasn't his, signing what he had no right to sign, building a life on a foundation of documents that were never going to hold.
He had been so certain she wasn't coming back.
She stood up.
Washed her face.
Opened the bathroom door.
Mateo was still asleep.
One arm had escaped from under the blanket.
His hand was open, palm up, fingers slightly curled.
The marks on his wrist were still visible in the low light.
Mariana sat on the edge of the bed.
She didn't touch him.
Just sat there in the dark, close enough that he would know, when he woke, that someone was there.
Monday was four days away.
The company, the creditor, Aurelio's records, the fraud case, the property, the corrected custody filing — all of it was four days away.
Tonight there was only this.
A sleeping child.
A door that locked from the inside.
A room that was warm.
Her phone lit up once on the nightstand.
A message from an unknown number — different from Sofía's, different from the one before.
*"You should ask Ricardo what he did with the federal contract your father won in 2019.
The one for the Puebla highway project.
Ask him where that money went."*
Mariana stared at the screen.
The Puebla contract.
Her father had spent eighteen months winning that bid.
It had been the largest contract in the company's history.
He had died before the project was completed.
She had assumed Ricardo had managed the completion.
She had assumed the money had gone into the company.
She had assumed a great many things.
She typed back: *Who are you?*
May you like
The message showed as delivered.
No reply came.
