Chapter 6 - The Shadows on Calle de la Amargura
The final night arrived. Sunday evening brought a heavy thunderstorm that rattled the stained-glass windows of the villa.
Mauricio sat in the dark living room, a half-empty bottle of tequila on the floor beside him. He wasn't packing. He was waiting. His arrogance had turned into a desperate, cornered malice.
"We aren't leaving," he muttered to the darkness. "Let the old man’s lawyers come with the police. The press will have a field day with a wealthy nonprofit director throwing her elderly mother onto the street in the middle of a storm."
Graciela sat on the stairs, her knees pulled to her chest, shivering in the cold. She looked at the family photographs still clinging to the dead refrigerator. Images of Arturo holding a young Valeria on his shoulders. Images of a time when love was real, before she allowed herself to be blinded by the smooth promises of a parasite.
"She won't stop, Mauricio," Graciela whispered, her voice hollow. "Valeria isn't weak. She never was. She’s exactly like her father."
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"I don't care about her father!" Mauricio roared, slamming his glass against the stone floor, sending shards of crystal flying into the dark. "Tomorrow morning, I'm going to her office. I'm going to show the world what she did to us."
He didn't realize that outside, parked along the narrow cobblestone street, three unmarked vehicles from the Federal Asset Forfeiture Division were already in place, waiting for the sunrise.
