Chapter 6 - THE SHADOWS OF SANTA MARTHAThe damp chill of Santa Martha Acatitla women’s prison seeped through the concrete walls of Block 4. Valeria sat on the edge of a narrow, rusted metal cot, wrapped in a coarse gray blanket. Her hair, once styled by top stylists in Polanco, was greasy and tied back with a rubber band. Her face was bare of makeup, pale and hollowed out by endless anxiety and sleepless nights.
The heavy iron door of her cell clanked open. A female guard stood in the doorway, holding a clipboard.
"Santos. You have a visitor," the guard barked.
Valeria didn't look up. "I don't want visitors. Tell them to go away."
"It's not a lawyer," the guard said with a cruel smirk. "It's your mother."
Valeria’s head snapped up. Hope flickered in her chest. Her mother. Surely her family would mortgage their house, hire international human rights attorneys, find a loophole, do something to get her out of this hellhole.
Ten minutes later, Valeria sat across the thick Plexiglas partition in the prison’s visitors' room. Her mother, Elena, sat on the other side. But Elena didn't look like a mother coming to comfort her daughter; she looked like a stranger staring at a decomposing corpse.
Valeria grabbed the plastic phone receiver with trembling hands. "Mom! Oh, thank God. You have to help me. Garza is useless. We need to hire senior counsel from the Supreme Court. We can sell the beach house in Cabo—"
"There is no beach house, Valeria," Elena interrupted, her voice entirely flat, devoid of warmth or maternal pity.
Valeria froze. "What do you mean? Iván and I—"
"Iván gave up all remaining assets to plea-bargain for a reduced sentence," Elena said, her eyes boring into her daughter. "And Ernesto’s legal team filed civil recovery liens against every single gift, piece of jewelry, and real estate property you acquired during your marriage. The police even came to my house yesterday and seized the Mercedes you bought me for Mother's Day."
Valeria felt the room spin. "They can't do that! That was a gift!"
"It was purchased with funds acquired through criminal fraud and attempted murder," Elena said coldly. "Valeria, listen to me very carefully. You did this to yourself. You had a husband who loved you, who gave you everything, and you threw it away for greed and a younger man who sold you out to the federal police within forty-eight hours of being arrested."
Tears streamed down Valeria’s cheeks, hot and bitter. "Mom, please... don't abandon me. I'm your daughter!"
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"My daughter died the day she decided to put poison in her husband's medicine cup," Elena whispered.
She hung up the phone receiver, stood up without looking back, and walked out of the visitation room, leaving Valeria screaming into a dead plastic phone while prison guards slowly closed in around her.
