Chapter 7 - SHADOWS BEHIND BARSThree hundred miles away from the luxury and lights of San Pedro Garza García, the maximum-security federal penitentiary of Almoloya de Juárez stood cold, gray, and imposing against a bleak mountain backdrop.
In Cell Block 4, isolation unit, two men sat in silence.
Rodrigo Fuentes wore a standard-issue orange jumpsuit that hung loosely on his frame. His expensive hair was unstyled and greasy; his beard was grown out in patches of gray and black. He stared blankly at the rough concrete wall across from him, his hands resting limply between his knees.
The invincible corporate heir was gone. In his place sat a broken, hollow shell of a man.
A heavy set of keys jingled down the concrete corridor. Heavy combat boots approached Cell 402.
Octavio Fuentes, housed in the cell directly across the hall, pressed his face against the steel bars, his voice raspy and desperate as he called out to the guard.
“Hey! Guard! Listen to me!” Octavio demanded, his lifelong habit of giving orders dying a very hard death. “I need a phone call! I need to speak to Senator Mendoza! My lawyers said the appeal was supposed to be filed by noon!”
The guard didn't even slow down. He tossed a small plastic tray containing gray mush and a cup of lukewarm water through the slot in Octavio’s door, grunting coldly:
“Senator Mendoza resigned from office yesterday, Fuentes. The federal attorney general’s office is auditing his entire office next week. Eat your food and shut your mouth.”
Octavio stumbled backward, his knees buckling. He hit the concrete floor of his cell, staring at the gray tray in utter disbelief. The politicians he had bought, the judges he had paid off, the system he had manipulated for decades—it had all abandoned him the moment his money disappeared.
Across the hall, Rodrigo let out a dry, humorless laugh that sounded more like a sob.
“She won, Dad,” Rodrigo whispered, his voice trembling as tears finally leaked from his bloodshot eyes. “Valeria won.”
Octavio looked up, his face twisted in a mask of impotent rage. He grabbed the steel bars of his cell and shook them with all his might.
“Shut up!” Octavio roared. “It’s her fault! It’s that ungrateful bitch’s fault! If you hadn’t married her—if we had gotten rid of her sooner—!”
“No,” Rodrigo interrupted, cutting his father off with a harsh, bitter truth that finally penetrated his thick skull. “If I had treated her right... if I hadn't been arrogant, cruel, and unfaithful... she would have protected us. She was the smartest person in any room we ever walked into, and we treated her like a servant.”
Rodrigo covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking as he wept uncontrollably in the dark, damp cell.
“She took everything, Dad,” Rodrigo choked out. “Our money, our company, our home, our legacy... and our son.”
Octavio slowly slid down the steel bars of his own cell, staring at the cold concrete floor as the heavy iron doors locked tight, sealing them in a permanent, inescapable darkness of their own making.
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They had wanted to bury Valeria in a golden cage.
Instead, they had dug their own graves.
