Chapter 7 - The Desperate Play
Even behind the concrete walls of the Santa Martha Acatitla women’s prison, Doña Esther Aranda refused to accept defeat. Dressed in a simple blue inmate uniform that stripped her of her aristocratic dignity, she sat across from her defense attorney in the visitor’s room, her eyes flashing with a dangerous, desperate malice.
"Alejandro has cut off all our offshore funding," the attorney whispered, looking nervously at the guards. "Ricardo is ready to sign a plea deal to reduce his sentence. He’s going to testify that you were the one who authorized the forged certificates, Esther."
"The coward," Esther hissed, her fingers clenching into a tight fist on the metal table. "He wouldn't have even known how to open a Panama account without my guidance. I will not die in this place over the whims of a gallery girl and my ungrateful son."
"What do you want to do?" the attorney asked. "We have no liquidity left. The Aranda Holdings board has officially terminated your seat."
Esther leaned forward, her voice dropping into a sinister whisper. "Marcela still has her private collection of jewelry hidden in a safe deposit box under a false name in Guadalajara. Tell her to liquidate it. Use the money to contact the media syndicates. I want a full exposé on Valeria. Claim she fabricated the domestic violence charges to seize control of the Aranda estate. Frame it as a corporate coup orchestrated by an ambitious outsider."
The attorney hesitated. "Esther... Alejandro will destroy us if we attack his wife in the press again."
"Alejandro is blinded by that child!" Esther snarled. "If we destroy her reputation, the federal judge will look at her forensic reports with suspicion. We only need to create enough doubt to get me out on bail. Once I am out, I will handle the rest."
Two days later, a notorious tabloid magazine published a massive headline: The Real Estate Coup: Did Alejandro Aranda’s Wife Fabricate an Assault to Eliminate Her In-Laws?
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The article contained fabricated text messages allegedly sent from Valeria to an art gallery associate, bragging about how she had "trapped" the young billionaire and was planning to clear out his family to secure the inheritance for her child.
The poison was back on the streets, but this time, the public wasn't buying it. The world had already seen the live footage of Doña Esther being led away in handcuffs, and the tide of public sentiment had permanently turned.
