Chapter 2 - The Northern Concrete
The rain began to fall as Victor’s armored SUV tore through the heavy traffic of the Reforma district, heading toward the northern limits of Mexico City. The luxury and glass of the financial zone quickly gave way to the gray, low-slung concrete of Northside—a neighborhood of auto-repair shops, tangled overhead wires, and cheap residential blocks that the city's glossy travel brochures always ignored.
Inside the vehicle, the silence was broken only by the quiet rhythm of the windshield wipers. Annie was wrapped in Victor’s charcoal-wool suit jacket, sitting on the premium leather seat with a glass of warm milk the chauffeur had secured from the hotel kitchen before they left. She had eaten three of the fresh pastries from the car’s built-in fridge, her small stomach making hollow, rumbling sounds that made Victor’s throat tighten with a painful knot.
"Annie," Victor said gently, turning around from the front passenger seat to look at her. "Tell me about the room where you live with Mom."
Annie looked up, a mustache of milk on her upper lip. "It’s on the third floor, Dad. Above the bakery. It’s small, but Mom made paper stars and glued them to the ceiling so I can see them when the lights go out. The roof leaks when it rains like this, so we have to use old paint buckets to catch the water. Mom says it sounds like a drum solo."
Victor closed his eyes, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the armrest. He remembered the custom-built nursery he had designed for Annie in their Lomas de Chapultepec mansion—a room with heated floors, imported Italian wallpaper, and a miniature playground. His mother had sold that mansion a year ago, claiming it held "too many bad memories of Catherine" and advising him to move into a high-rise penthouse downtown.
"Why didn't Mom ever call my office?" Victor asked, his voice cracking. "Even if she thought I hated her... why didn't she come to the corporate headquarters?"
"We tried," Annie whispered, her big eyes filling with old fear. "The first month, Mom took me to the big glass tower with the Williams logo. But the men at the door with the guns said that if we ever came back, they would call the migration police and tell them Mom was trying to steal corporate secrets. They had a paper with your signature on it, Dad. It said Catherine Williams was forbidden from entering the property."
"My signature..." Victor muttered, a horrible realization washing over him. He had signed dozens of blank corporate authorizations and non-disclosure templates for his mother during the restructuring of their property management division three years ago. He had trusted her blindly, believing that a mother could never weaponize her son’s signature to destroy his child.
The SUV slowed down, pulling up along a narrow, cracked street lined with rusted metal garage doors. Brian stopped the vehicle in front of a dilapidated three-story brick building with peeling yellow paint. A neon sign for a bakery flickered brokenly on the ground floor, casting jagged pink light across the puddles.
"We’re here, Mr. Victor," Brian said softly, his eyes reflecting the grim landscape in the rearview mirror.
Victor didn't wait for Brian to open the door. He jumped out into the cold rain, lifting Annie into his arms and shielding her with his body as he marched toward the narrow concrete staircase that led upward from the side of the bakery.
The air inside the stairwell smelled of wet dog, stale grease, and industrial detergent. The walls were covered in graffiti and damp mold. With every step Victor took up those cracked concrete stairs, the image of his mother’s glittering birthday party grew more repulsive.
On the third floor, at the very end of a dark hallway lit by a single flickering bulb, was a door with the number 3B scratched into the wood.
Annie reached out her small hand and knocked three times—a specific, rhythmic cadence.
A few seconds later, the sound of a heavy metal latch sliding back echoed through the wood. The door swung open, and Victor’s heart stopped beating.
Catherine stood in the doorway. She was thirty-four, but she looked forty. The vibrant, laughing woman who used to paint canvases in their garden was gone. She wore an oversized, faded gray sweater, her hair pinned up with a cheap plastic clip, her face pale and lined with exhaustion. She was holding a small piece of old cloth, which she had been using to clean what looked like a small electric hotplate on a wooden crate.
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When her eyes moved from Annie to Victor, the cloth fell from her hand, hitting the dirty linoleum floor with a soft thud.
"Victor?" she whispered, her voice barely a breath. She took a step back, her hands flying to her mouth as if she were seeing a ghost from a life she had been forced to forget.
