Chapter 2 - CHAPTER 1: THE SECOND TARGET
The words echoed in the cold air of Lucía’s dark living room: “Prepare the second donor.”
I stared at the paused frame of the video on the laptop screen. Lucía zoomed in, enhancing the contrast until every line of my mother-in-law’s face became starkly visible. Elvira’s smile was subtle, evil, and entirely detached from the weeping performance Rodrigo was putting on for the camera.
“Who else, Valeria?” Lucía asked softly, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. “Who else in your life or his family could they possibly target?”
My mind raced through our small circle. Rodrigo was an only child. His father had died years ago under mysterious circumstances—a sudden heart attack, they said, though now my stomach churned at the thought. Renata, his younger sister, was actually his half-sister from Elvira’s second marriage.
“Renata,” I whispered, the blood draining from my face. “It’s Renata.”
“You said earlier that Renata was tested and wasn't a match,” Lucía pointed out, pulling up public registry files.
“That’s what Dr. Beltrán told us!” I said, grabbing Lucía’s arm as terror gripped my chest. “He said her blood type was incompatible. But what if that was a lie to protect her for later? What if they needed me first because my blood type matched a high-paying buyer on the black market, and Renata is held in reserve for another client?”
Lucía’s expression hardened. She reached for her phone and immediately opened an encrypted messaging app. “We need to get to Renata before they isolate her like they did you. Where is she right now?”
“She’s at university in Querétaro,” I recalled. “She lives in a student apartment off-campus. But Elvira controls her bank account. If Elvira tells her to come back to Guadalajara under the pretext that Rodrigo is dying and needs emotional support, Renata will hop on the first bus.”
“Then we have to intercept her first,” Lucía said. She stood up and walked to a floor-to-ceiling mirror, handing me a pair of scissors, a bottle of dark brown hair dye, and a set of non-descript clothes from her closet. “First, we change your appearance. You are no longer Valeria Salgado, the corporate HR head. As far as the public knows, you’re an unstable, runaway wife. If anyone spots you, they will call the police—or worse, they’ll call Rodrigo’s men.”
While the dye soaked into my hair, changing my recognizable light highlights into a deep, raven black, Lucía began digging into the financial back-end of Beltrán’s clinic, Saint Jude Private Hospital.
“Look at this,” Lucía pointed to a series of shell company transfers routed through offshore accounts in Panama and the Cayman Islands. “Saint Jude isn’t just a hospital. It’s an unlicensed clearinghouse for a syndicate known as El Enclave. They specialize in bespoke organ matches for international buyers who pay upwards of two million dollars per organ.”
“And Rodrigo’s debt?” I asked, looking at my transformed face in the mirror. My long hair was gone, cut into a sharp, jagged bob.
“Rodrigo didn’t just lose money at high-stakes poker,” Lucía revealed, showing me a leaked ledger from an underground ledger database she accessed through her criminal law contacts. “He owes nine million dollars to El Enclave’s enforcement arm. They were going to kill him three months ago. Instead, he made a deal: his wife’s heart for a clean slate, plus a kickback.”
A cold, fiery rage began to burn away the panic that had consumed me since I escaped that waste container. I had loved that man. I had cooked for him, supported his failed architecture firm, and sacrificed my own savings to keep us afloat. And to him, I was merely nine million dollars' worth of meat.
“We go to Querétaro,” I said, my voice steady for the first time all night. “We secure Renata, and then we tear down Rodrigo, Elvira, and Beltrán brick by brick.”
We packed a single duffel bag with cash, burner phones, and Lucía’s legal equipment. As we slipped out the back entrance of her apartment complex, a black SUV with tinted windows pulled slowly up to the front gate. Rodrigo’s watchers were already here.
May you like
Lucía nudged me into the shadows. We crept down the alleyway to an old, unregistered sedan she kept parked three blocks away for emergencies. As the engine turned over, I looked back at the city lights of Guadalajara.
The hunt had begun, but this time, the merchandise was hunting back.
