Chapter 5 - The Dark Secret of the Vega Family
The letters in the envelope were written by Mateo Jr., Carmen's youngest son—the one who had died.
Twenty years ago, Mateo Jr. had discovered that his older brothers, Eduardo and Carlos, had been systematically embezzling funds from their father’s construction company, using substandard materials in public housing projects to pocket the difference. When Mateo Jr. threatened to go to the authorities, his brothers had set him up.
They had planted drugs in his car, framed him for a major financial theft, and used their family's political connections to have him arrested.
Mateo Jr. had spent two years in a federal penitentiary in Puente Grande, where his health had deteriorated rapidly. He had died of a preventable lung infection in his cell, alone and disgraced, while his brothers took over the family business and painted him as the black sheep who had ruined the family's honor.
Carmen had only discovered the truth after her husband's death, when she found Mateo Jr.’s jailhouse letters hidden in Don Mateo’s private study.
When she confronted Eduardo and Carlos, they hadn't denied it. Instead, they had laughed in her face, telling her that the statute of limitations had passed and that she was powerless to stop them. They had threatened to have her committed to a mental asylum if she tried to reveal the truth, using their wealth to isolate her from her friends and the rest of the family.
That was why she had gone into hiding in the narrow alley. That was why she had pretended to be poor. She had been protecting the remaining assets—the forty-five million pesos in shares—from the sons who had murdered her youngest boy.
"She wanted justice, Diego," Herrera said, his face grave as he read the legal briefs. "She kept these records because she was waiting for someone she could trust to help her expose them. She knew that if she went to the police herself, her sons would use their connections to silence her. But you... you are an outsider. You have no connection to the Vega name. You have the clean hands she needed to finally bring her sons to justice."
I looked at the letters from Mateo Jr. He had been twenty-one when he died—the exact same age I was now. He had been a college student too, full of dreams and a belief in the goodness of the world, until his own blood had crushed him.
May you like
"What do we do, Licenciado?" I asked, my fingers tightening around the letters. "How do we fight people with that much power?"
"We don't fight them in the dark, Diego," Herrera said, a cold, sharp light in his eyes. "We fight them in the light of the law. And we have the one weapon they never expected our mother to keep."
