Chapter 3 - The Deception of the Empire
The silence in the room was shattered by the sound of Paola’s acrylic nails violently scratching against the mahogany table.
"That's impossible!" Paola snapped, turning her furious gaze onto Alejandro. "Alejandro, tell me this is a joke! You told me you owned ninety percent of the holding company! You told me she had nothing!"
Alejandro couldn't speak. Sweat was now visibly dripping down his jawline. His mind raced back to eight years ago—to a quiet afternoon in Jalisco when he had begged Valeria to trust him, swearing that the paperwork was just a formality to appease her family's trust officers. He had completely forgotten the clause. He had assumed she was too naïve, too blinded by love, to ever enforce it.
"Arturo!" Alejandro barked, his voice trembling with hidden panic. "Look at the document! Is this legally binding?!"
Arturo’s hands shook as he scanned the pages. His eyes widened in sheer terror as he read the ironclad notarization. "Mr. Castañeda... the capital injection for the Reforma Tower, the Santa Fe Complex, and the Riviera Maya resorts all trace back to the original trust umbrella created by the De La Vega estate. If this holding structure holds up in court... she doesn't just own fifty-one percent of the parent company. She has the immediate legal right to freeze all corporate accounts."
"Which I already did forty-five minutes ago," Valeria said smoothly.
Paola gasped, standing up so fast her leather chair rolled back into the glass wall. "You did what?!"
"At 8:15 AM today, the National Banking and Securities Commission served a temporary injunction on all primary accounts linked to Castañeda Holdings," Valeria explained calmly, pulling out her personal phone. "You see, Alejandro, while you were busy buying diamond necklaces in Miami and funding PR campaigns for your mistress, I was spending my pregnancy reviewing corporate tax filings."
She slid a tablet across the table. On the screen was a detailed financial ledger highlighting red flags, offshore transfers to the Cayman Islands, and fraudulent billing statements totaling over forty million dollars.
"You didn't just cheat on me, Alejandro," Valeria said, her eyes burning with an intense, unyielding fire. "You embezzled money from your own investors to cover up massive construction deficits in the Riviera Maya project. Deficits caused by cheap, illegal building materials that your lovely Public Relations Director here helped sweep under the rug."
Paola froze. The color drained from her face, leaving her looking like a pale ghost under the harsh recessed lighting of the conference room.
"You... you can't prove that," Paola stammered, her voice losing its icy edge.
"I don't need to prove it," Valeria replied. "The Federal Tax Inspectorate is already raiding your offices on the 40th floor right now."
As if on cue, the muffled sounds of shouting, commotion, and heavy footsteps echoed from the hallway outside. The frosted glass doors of Conference Room Three rattled as uniformed officers from the Federal Financial Crimes Division marched down the corridor.
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Alejandro slammed his fists onto the table, standing up frantically. "Valeria! Are you out of your mind?! You're destroying everything I built! You're destroying our family's legacy! What about Mateo's future?!"
"Mateo's future will be built on truth, integrity, and honor," Valeria said, stepping closer until she was just inches away from the man she once adored. "Not on fraudulent empire built by a coward who abandoned his wife while she bled on a hospital operating table."
