—Mom, it’s just an authorization for insurance. Sign me here.
I trusted him.
I signed.
When I left the hospital, something about him had changed. He became cold, distant. I no longer asked how he was; I only asked about earrings, powers of attorney, accounts, keys. Then he announced that he would marry Vanessa suddenly, without consulting me at all. And then came that call: “I already got your money. I already sold your apartment”.
I went to my studio. I opened the safe hidden behind a painting by Ernesto. And there was my real weapon.
Ten years earlier, just after I was widowed, my tax lawyer told me a phrase that I never forgot:
—Teresa, a woman with assets and only one heir, must protect herself even from what she does not want to imagine.
That is why we created a family holding company, a holding company called Villaseñor Patrimony S. de RL. All my properties, including the beachfront apartment where I lived, were not in my name as a natural person. They were owned by the company. I was a life administrator with absolute powers. Diego, yes, had participation in the company, but without a vote and without the power to sell anything. There was also a very clear clause: no property could be sold without my digital signature as administrator.
Regarding money, things were even simpler. Diego only knew my day-to-day checking account, where I left forty or fifty thousand pesos for monthly expenses. My true assets were in investment accounts linked to the holding company, in institutions that he didn’t even know existed.
That is to say: Diego had not taken my fortune.
He had stolen my change.
And the apartment thing was worse: he had sold something that he couldn’t legally sell.
He had committed fraud.
I made myself a coffee. I sat down to think. It had two paths. The first: call him, warn him, save him from jail. The second: letting life teach him the lesson that I was not able to teach him in thirty-something years.
I remembered his voice on the phone.
“See you. Or maybe not.”
I remembered Vanessa asking if my house wasn’t too good for a lonely old woman.
I remembered my signature torn between fever and confidence.
I had the coffee in one gulp.
And I decided not to save him.
The next day, mother’s love ended where the law began.w
The next day, Thursday, I dressed as if I were going to an elegant war. I wore a navy blue silk dress, pearls, sober heels and a red lipstick that Ernesto always said gave me the face of an invincible woman. Then I called my lawyer, Mr. Raúl Cárdenas.
