Chapter 22 - The Ghost from the Coast
Over a thousand miles away, in a humid, rundown coastal town near Veracruz, Paulina Rivas stared at her reflection in the cracked mirror of a dingy motel bathroom.
Her designer clothes had long since been sold to pay for cheap meals and bus fare. Her hair, once meticulously styled by Polanco’s top salons, was tangled and bleached unevenly by the salt air. She had spent the last eight months hiding from society, working odd jobs as a cashier in a local seafood diner where nobody knew her name or cared about her pedigree.
The door to the cramped motel room creaked open. A heavy-set local man—a deckhand she had met at the docks—walked in, tossing a bag of groceries onto the small Formica table.
“You got mail at the front desk,” the man grunted, not looking at her. “Looked like some legal notice from the capital.”
Paulina froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she walked slowly over to the table and picked up the plain white envelope bearing the seal of the Federal District Court.
She tore it open with trembling, calloused fingers.
Inside was a formal notification regarding the liquidation of Diego Garza’s remaining hidden assets, alongside a final, irrevocable court ruling closing the Rivas family bankruptcy estate. At the very bottom, written in a neat, professional font, was a note from the court-appointed trustee:
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“All claims to the Avenida San Ángel property have been permanently and legally dismissed. The sole title holder, Mara Rivas-Vance, has officially dissolved all corporate encumbrances. The estate is now a permanent public foundation.”
Paulina let out a choked, desperate sob, sliding down the side of the motel bed until she hit the cold concrete floor, clutching the paper to her chest as the reality of her total, irreversible erasure finally sank in.
