Chapter 3 - THE UNTHINKABLE ALLIANCE
"Put the flashlight down, Javier," Rubén said quietly. He didn't run. He didn't look afraid. In fact, his eyes were eerily calm—a stark contrast to the broken man I had seen at the hospital hours earlier.
"What the hell are you doing in my home, Rubén?!" I roared, stepping toward him. "Did Gabriela send you here to clean up her mess?!"
"Gabriela is currently sitting in a holding cell, crying to her lawyer," Rubén replied, stepping out of the shadows. He threw the leather binder onto the kitchen island. It slammed down with a heavy thud. "She didn't send me. I came here to find this before her lawyer could get his hands on it."
I stared at the binder, then back at Rubén. "What is that?"
"It’s proof," Rubén said, his voice flat and cold. "Proof that your sister hasn't just been stealing from you, Javier. She’s been blackmailing half the city. And she was planning to destroy you and your father completely."
I lowered the flashlight slowly, my mind racing. "Explain. Now."
Rubén pulled out a chair and sat down at the island, looking exhausted. "Three years ago, Gabriela started gambling online. She lost tens of thousands of dollars. When the debts piled up, she used her position at your father’s firm to embezzle funds. But Don Arturo’s chief auditor started asking questions. So, what did she do? She framed the auditor for fraud, got him fired, and covered her tracks."
I listened in horrified silence. I remembered that auditor—Mr. Henderson, a loyal employee who had worked for my dad for fifteen years. He had been ruined, his reputation destroyed, all because of my sister.
"She didn't stop there," Rubén continued. "She started taking out loans in your name using forged signatures. She used your credit, your assets, your house as collateral. This binder contains the fraudulent loan documents, the shell company accounts, and the forged power-of-attorney forms."
"Why?" I choked out. "Why would she do this to her own brother? To her father? We gave her everything!"
"Because she hates you, Javier," Rubén said bluntly, looking me straight in the eye. "She spent her entire life believing Don Arturo loved you more. She thought you were the golden child, the perfect son with the perfect family. When Emiliano was born, your father started talking about setting up a primary trust fund for him as the first grandson. That was the final straw for Gabriela."
"So she poisoned him?" I felt sick. "She poisoned an eight-year-old boy because of a trust fund?!"
"She didn't want to kill him," Rubén clarified, though his expression remained grim. "She wanted to make him sick enough so that you and Daniela would be forced to rush him to the hospital, leaving her time to pull off a massive transfer of funds from your father’s corporate account. The basement... locking him down there... that was her sick way of punishing him for being your son, and keeping him quiet while she tried to execute the wire transfer from her laptop during the party."
My hands shook violently. The sheer level of malice, calculating greed, and sociopathy was beyond anything I could comprehend.
"Why are you telling me this, Rubén?" I asked suspiciously. "You’re her husband. You’ve lived under the same roof with her for ten years."
Rubén reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a manila envelope, tossing it next to the binder.
"Because six months ago, I found out she was slowly poisoning me too," Rubén said softly.
The air left my lungs. "What?"
"I started having unexplained seizures, stomach cramps, memory loss," Rubén said, his eyes darkening. "I thought I was sick. I went to specialists, but they couldn't find anything. Then I found a bottle of thallium—a heavy metal poison—hidden inside her vanity mirror. She was slowly poisoning me to collect my $2 million life insurance policy to pay off her cartel gambling debts."
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I stared at my brother-in-law in absolute horror. The woman I grew up with, the sister I had shared childhood Christmas mornings with, was a literal monster.
"I stayed silent because I needed hard evidence," Rubén said, his voice trembling for the first time. "I needed to make sure she could never, ever hurt anyone again. Tonight, when she locked Emiliano in that basement... she crossed a line that can never be undone. I’m done protecting her, Javier. I want her destroyed."
