Chapter 13 - The Woman My Mother Stopped Trusting
I went to Querétaro with Mariana and two security officers.
Dad stayed behind.
He hated it.
That was partly why I knew I had to go without him.
Elena Cortés lived in a narrow house behind a jacaranda tree.
She opened the door before I reached the bell.
“You look like Lucía when you’re angry,” she said.
“People keep telling me that.”
“Because it’s true.”
She let me inside.
There were no family photographs on the walls.
Only landscapes.
“Did you use my father’s executive token after my mother died?” I asked.
Elena smiled sadly.
“Straight to it.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Did Ignacio?”
“Yes.”
I sat very still.
“You saw him?”
“I gave it to him.”
My anger rose.
“Why?”
“Because he told me Arturo needed emergency payments authorized while he was in Houston.”
“You believed him?”
“I worked for Arturo. Ignacio was his right hand. Everyone believed him.”
That sentence had become the theme of my family’s disaster.
“What happened between you and my mother?”
Elena looked toward the window.
“She discovered I had given Ignacio access. She accused me of helping him falsify approvals.”
“Had you?”
“Not knowingly.”
“But you did not tell her.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I was ashamed.”
I thought of Alejandro.
Different betrayal.
Same cowardice.
Elena opened a drawer and removed a thin notebook.
“Lucía came to see me the night before she died.”
My hands went cold.
“She said she had finally found the first false authorization. Not the one on her trust. An older one.”
“How old?”
“Before Vanguardia was Vanguardia.”
I frowned.
“My father founded it.”
“Yes. But not alone.”
She slid the notebook to me.
On the first page were three names.
Arturo Mendoza.
Lucía García.
Gabriel Mendoza.
I looked up.
“Who is Gabriel?”
Elena stared at me.
“Your father’s older brother.”
I almost laughed from disbelief.
“My father is an only child.”
“No,” she said. “That is what the family decided to tell after Gabriel disappeared.”
The room went silent.
“When?”
“Thirty-one years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because he stole from the first investment fund Arturo and Lucía built. They covered the losses to protect investors. Gabriel vanished. The story was buried.”
I looked down at the notebook.
“And Santa Lucía?”
“Lucía thought the same signature pattern had returned.”
My pulse hammered.
“Gabriel was alive?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Do you?”
Elena shook her head.
Then she pointed to the initials on the old forged approval.
A.M.
“Your father has spent twelve years assuming those initials meant someone was pretending to be Arturo Mendoza.”
I waited.
Elena’s face tightened.
“But there was another Mendoza man who used the name Arturo when he needed to disappear.”
I stared at her.
“Gabriel’s middle name,” she whispered, “was Arturo.”
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