Chapter 5 - The Shadow of Chipinque
By midweek, the corporate purge at Norte Firme was complete.
I fired forty-two corrupt managers, restructured the financial board, and appointed loyal executives who had been with me since the early days. The stock prices stabilized, and the public rallied around my story—the self-made woman who had survived a ruthless poison plot and defeated a cartel-backed corporate takeover.
However, the threat was far from over.
On Thursday evening, I was staying at my secure mountain villa in Chipinque—a heavily guarded compound nestled in the wooded slopes overlooking Monterrey. Julian had doubled the security detail, placing tactical guards around the perimeter and installing night-vision cameras along the stone walls.
At 11:00 PM, while I was reviewing the quarterly audit reports in my study, the landline phone on my desk rang.
It was an unlisted, encrypted line.
I picked up the receiver. "Renata."
"You are a very impressive woman, Mrs. Renata," a deep, rasping voice spoke from the other end. The accent was heavy, smooth, and laced with quiet danger.
It was Roberto Mendoza.
"Mr. Mendoza," I said calmly, leaning back in my chair. "I was wondering when you would have the courage to call me yourself."
Mendoza chuckled—a dry, soulless sound. "Courage? I don't need courage to speak to a woman who cleans offices for a living. You ruined three of my financial fronts this week, Renata. You put my former mistress in jail, you seized eight hundred million pesos of my capital, and you humiliated my associates."
"I protected my company from parasites," I replied. "You picked the wrong target when you recruited Mauricio."
"Mauricio was a fool," Mendoza dismissed effortlessly. "I never cared about him. But you... you have asset portfolios that I need. The industrial parks in Santa Catarina are situated directly on the trade corridor to the Texas border. I need those logistics hubs."
"You won't get a single square meter of my land, Mendoza," I said, my voice dripping with icy absolute resolve. "Not today, not ever."
"Listen to me carefully, Renata," Mendoza’s tone shifted, dropping into a terrifyingly quiet threat. "You survived the poison because Elvira was stupid and used slow chemical doses. I don't use slow chemical doses. I use lead. You have forty-eight hours to sign over fifty-one percent of Norte Firme’s Apodaca facilities to my legal group. If you refuse, I will burn your industrial parks to the ground—with your workers inside them."
"Are you threatening my people?" I stood up from my desk, my fists clenched tightly.
"I am giving you a business proposition," Mendoza said softly. "Forty-eight hours, Renata. Choose wisely."
The line went dead.
I held the receiver for a long moment before setting it back on the cradle. My heart was pounding against my ribs, but it wasn't fear that filled my chest; it was a burning, incandescent rage.
This man had tried to murder me using my own mother-in-law. He had tried to steal my life's work using my pathetic husband. And now he was threatening the innocent workers who had built Norte Firme alongside me for twenty years.
Julian rushed into the study, holding a secure satellite tablet. "We traced the call, Renata! It originated from a private ranch in Montemorelos!"
"Assemble our legal, security, and intelligence teams, Julian," I said, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows toward the twinkling lights of the valley below. "We aren't going to wait forty-eight hours."
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"What are we going to do?" Julian asked.
"Mendoza thinks he's the only one who knows how to destroy a empire," I said, a dangerous smile spreading across my face. "It's time to show him how a real builder tears down a wall."
