Chapter 24 - The Shadow in the Capital
While peace settled over San Ángel, the machinery of federal justice continued to grind down the remnants of Diego Garza’s corrupt political network.
In a high-security federal penitentiary outside Toluca, Diego sat on the edge of a steel bunk bed, staring through a small, barred window at the gray concrete yard outside. His bespoke suits were gone, replaced by the universal uniform of incarcerated felons. His political allies had long since wiped his phone numbers from their directories, pretending they had never even known him.
The heavy metal door of his cell clanked open. A prison guard tapped his nightstick against the bars.
“Garza. Visitor in Booth Four. You’ve got ten minutes.”
Diego frowned, dragging his feet across the concrete floor. He hadn't received a visitor in six months. Paulina had stopped writing after her escape to the coast, and his lawyers had abandoned him once his retainer accounts were seized by the state.
When he sat down behind the thick glass partition and picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver, his eyes widened in shock.
Sitting on the other side of the glass was not a lawyer, nor a political fixer.
It was Andrés.
Andrés looked immaculate in a dark charcoal suit, his expression completely calm, carrying the quiet authority of a man who held the keys to the kingdom.
Diego pressed the telephone receiver to his ear, his face flushing with a mixture of humiliation and sudden, desperate fury.
“You... you bastard,” Diego hissed into the speaker, his voice vibrating with rage. “Did you come here to gloat? To rub my face in the dirt?”
Andrés didn't smile. He simply looked at Diego with cold, dispassionate clinical detachment—the way a financial auditor looks at a bankrupt ledger sheet.
“I didn't come to gloat, Diego,” Andrés replied evenly, his voice clear through the intercom. “I came to deliver a message.”
“What message?” Diego spat, gripping the plastic receiver so hard his knuckles turned white.
“The federal prosecutor’s office is expanding its investigation into municipal real estate kickbacks,” Andrés said quietly. “They found the offshore ledger accounts you hid under your brother-in-law’s name in Panama. If you cooperate fully and hand over the remaining domestic assets you managed to stash away before your arrest, the prosecutor will spare your extended family further public humiliation.”
Diego stared through the glass, his breath catching in his throat. Even from inside a maximum-security prison cell, he was still losing whatever scraps he had left to the very man he had once mocked as a quiet nobody.
May you like
“And if I refuse?” Diego whispered.
“Then my wife’s foundation will seize every remaining cent of your personal holdings by Friday morning, leaving you with twenty-two years in prison and not a single peso to your name when you walk out,” Andrés said, standing up smoothly and adjusting his jacket cuffs. “Think about it, Diego. It’s your final ledger entry.”
