To ask questions.
The neighbors watched from windows.
Your mother stood beside you like a wall, but you felt her shaking.
Alejandro answered calmly. He had left with no bag. No laptop. No documents. Security cameras would prove it. The officers took notes, polite but distant, as if deciding whether you were criminals or simply unfortunate.
After they left, Alejandro went silent.
For hours.
Then he said, “I need to go back.”
Your stomach dropped.
“To the mansion?”
“To talk to her.”
“No.”
“She won’t stop.”
“You think returning will make her stop?” you asked. “She’ll see it worked.”
He paced the room.
“She’s attacking your family.”
“Yes,” you said. “Because she wants you to confuse protection with surrender.”
He looked at you, desperate.
“What do we do then?”
For once, you had an answer.
“We find out what she’s really afraid of.”
That night, you remembered something from your years cleaning the mansion.
Doña Beatriz had secrets.
Not the normal rich-people secrets. Not hidden jewelry or lovers or tax tricks whispered over lunch. You had seen locked filing cabinets opened only after midnight. Heard arguments behind library doors. Found burned paper ash in a silver tray the morning after Alejandro’s father’s death anniversary.
Most servants survive by not seeing.
But you had seen.
You just never had a reason to understand.
The next day, you visited the only person who might know more.
Rosa.
She had worked for the Mendoza family for twenty-two years before being dismissed suddenly, six months before you were hired. People in the mansion said she stole a bracelet. You never believed that story because rich families loved accusing poor women of theft whenever poor women knew too much.
Rosa lived in Iztapalapa with her daughter.
When she opened the door and saw you, she looked frightened before you even said Alejandro’s name.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know anything.”
You held up the legal notice.
“She’s accusing him now.”
Rosa stared at the paper.
Then she let you in.
Her apartment was small but spotless. She made coffee she did not drink and sat across from you with hands folded tightly. On the wall was a faded photograph of her younger self standing beside Alejandro as a child. He was missing a front tooth and holding a toy airplane.
“He was a sweet boy,” she said softly. “Too sweet for that house.”
“What happened?” you asked.
Rosa looked toward the door.
“Doña Beatriz did not build that fortune cleanly.”
You waited.
“After Don Esteban died, she changed things. Papers, signatures, board votes. People who questioned her were paid or ruined. I saw documents once. Not enough to understand everything, but enough to know Alejandro was supposed to inherit part of the company at twenty-five.”
Your breath caught.
“He didn’t?”
Rosa shook her head.
“She told him his father’s will left everything under her control until she decided he was ready. But Don Esteban loved that boy. He would never have trapped him like that.”
“Can you prove it?”
