Chapter 11 - The Small Apartment on Calle Morelos
The air in the apartment on Calle Morelos smelled permanently of cheap laundry detergent and old floor wax. For Leticia Rivas, who had spent seventy years waking up to the scent of imported French coffee and freshly cut orchids in San Ángel, this room was a physical punishment more brutal than any prison cell.
Her silk robes had been replaced by a faded polyester cardigan. Her maid, a quiet woman named Carmen who had served her for decades, had left within forty-eight hours of the eviction notice, refusing to work without back pay.
Leticia sat at the tiny formica kitchen table, staring at a stack of unpaid grocery bills and utility notices that looked like miniature death warrants. Her phone buzzed against the plastic tabletop. It was Paulina.
“Mom, did you see the papers?” Paulina’s voice on the other end was hysterical, punctuated by the crying of her infant in the background. Diego was currently locked in a federal holding facility inmates referred to as ‘The Tank,’ awaiting his arraignment on six counts of public corruption and money laundering. “They’re interviewing Mara on national television! She’s standing on our front steps, smiling like a queen, talking about her ‘philanthropic vision’! Everyone in Polanco is laughing at us. My friends won't even return my text messages.”
“Shut up, Paulina,” Leticia whispered, her voice cracked and hollow. “Just... shut up.”
“We need money, Mom. Diego’s defense lawyer wants half a million pesos just to file a motion for bail—"
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“We don't have fifty pesos, Paulina!” Leticia screamed, slamming her hand against the formica table so hard a cheap ceramic mug rattled. “Mara took everything! She holds the deeds, she holds the bank accounts, she holds the court orders! We are beggars, Paulina! Do you understand? We are absolute nobodies!”
The line went dead with a sharp click. Leticia dropped the phone, buried her face in her wrinkled hands, and wept for the first time in her life—not out of sorrow, but out of a cold, burning realization that she had built her entire empire on sand, and her own hatred had washed it away.
