Chapter 5 - Shadows of the PastTwo weeks after the legal storm turned their lives upside down, the reality of poverty set in hard for the former elites of Lomas Verdes.
In a cramped, second-floor apartment smelling faintly of fried oil and damp concrete, Leonor Robles sat on a sagging faux-leather sofa, staring blankly at a television that only had three working channels. Her designer silk robe was long gone, replaced by a faded cotton house dress she had bought at a local discount market.
The doorbell buzzed.
Leonor didn't move. She couldn't. Moving meant acknowledging that her life of luxury—the private drivers, the country club banquets, the endless stream of bowing servants—was gone forever.
Octavio shuffled out of the tiny kitchen holding a cheap plastic cup of instant coffee. His hair, usually meticulously dyed and combed, was now stark white and messy. The powerful real estate mogul looked like a ghost of his former self.
“Aren't you going to get that?” Octavio rasped, his voice weak.
“Get what? The bill collector? The landlord wanting rent?” Leonor spat bitterly. “Your son ruined us, Octavio. Your brilliant, pampered son and your obsession with status.”
Octavio didn't argue. He couldn't. He walked slowly to the metal apartment door and pulled it open.
Standing in the dim, unlit hallway wasn't a bill collector.
It was Jimena. But she looked entirely different. Her blonde hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, she wore no makeup, and she carried a plastic grocery bag filled with cheap instant noodles and canned beans.
“Mom, Dad,” Jimena said quietly, stepping inside and kicking off scuffed sneakers. “I got a job.”
Leonor looked up sharply, her eyes widening in sheer horror. “A job? What kind of job? Jimena, you are a Robles! You don't work!”
“We don't exist anymore, Mom,” Jimena said, her voice hollow and devoid of its usual arrogant snap. She slammed the grocery bag onto the small laminate kitchen table. “I’m working the front desk at a dental clinic downtown. Minimum wage. It pays enough to keep the electricity on, but barely.”
Octavio slumped against the wall, covering his face with his trembling hands. The proud patriarch who once looked down on everyone from his mansion now had to rely on his spoiled daughter’s minimum-wage salary just to eat canned tuna.
“If only... if only we hadn't treated her like that at the wedding breakfast,” Octavio whispered, the realization finally breaking his spirit. “If I hadn't raised my hand... if I hadn't slapped her...”
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“You didn't just slap a woman, Dad,” Jimena said coldly, looking her father dead in the eye. “You slapped a billionaire who was already holding your execution order in her pocket. You handed her the knife, and you guided her hand.”
Leonor began to cry softly, burying her face in her hands as the sound of traffic roared outside their tiny window—a stark, unyielding reminder of the city that had completely forgotten they ever existed.
