Chapter 3 - THE VIP ROOM CONSPIRACY AND THE PHONE CALL THAT CHANGED EVERYTHINGBack at the house in Naucalpan, the television was still blaring an infomercial to an empty room. The half-dried pot of beans sat on the back burner, smelling faintly of scorched iron.
Ofelia Salgado was pacing across the worn linoleum kitchen floor, clicking her cheap plastic sandals with every aggressive step. Bruno lay sprawled across the living room sofa, tossing a baseball up into the air and catching it lazily.
"Relax, Ma! You're making yourself crazy over nothing," Bruno scoffed, not looking up as the ball hit his palm with a rhythmic thwack. "Andrés was just acting like a dramatic idiot because he was tired from the drive. By tomorrow morning, he’ll come crawling back begging for forgiveness like he always does. We’ll tell him Jimena tripped while carrying the laundry basket. End of story."
Ofelia stopped pacing, her eyes flashing with venomous calculation. She pointed a bony finger straight at her youngest son.
"You are a fool, Bruno! You don't know your brother when he's backed into a corner," she hissed, her voice vibrating with malice. "Did you see the look in his eyes at the hospital? He didn't look like my son. He looked like a stranger—a stranger ready to ruin us."
Bruno sat up slowly, the baseball resting between his knees. "Ruind us how? What can he do? It’s our house! Our name is on the property deed, not that bitch's!"
"The house doesn't matter," Ofelia snapped, walking over to the landline phone on the kitchen counter. "What matters is what he tells the police. If they launch a full investigation, they'll find out about the loan sharks you used my signature for. They'll look into how we’ve been draining Andrés's corporate accounts to pay your debts. We could lose everything, Bruno! You could go to prison!"
Bruno's face paled beneath his stubble. "So... what do we do?"
Ofelia didn't answer immediately. She picked up the handset, punched in a familiar ten-digit number, and waited while it rang twice.
"Hello? Licenciado Morales? Yes, this is Ofelia Salgado... I need to schedule an urgent consultation regarding family assets, emergency guardianship, and... well, how to declare an individual mentally unfit to manage their own household."
Bruno grinned slowly, his arrogant confidence returning. "That's my mom. Always a step ahead."
Little did they know, halfway across the city in a private VIP recovery suite at the hospital, Andrés’s phone was sitting right beside Jimena's bed, blinking with a silent notification: Missed Call from Home Security System.
Andrés, sitting in the dark corner of the hospital room holding Jimena's limp, pale hand, watched the screen light up. He unlocked his phone, tapped the security app, and pulled up the live interior camera feed of the living room in Naucalpan.
Through the crystal-clear audio feed, every word of Ofelia and Bruno’s treasonous conversation streamed directly into his headphones.
Andrés listened as his mother plotted to destroy his life, his marriage, and his sanity. When the call ended, Andrés didn't cry. The last remaining fragment of his soul that belonged to the Salgado family shattered into dust.
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He leaned down, kissed Jimena’s cold forehead, and whispered into the quiet room:
"It’s over, my love. They thought they owned us. Now, I'm going to take everything they have."
