Chapter 9 - The Weakest LinkThe next morning, the fragile peace of the house was shattered from within.
Valeria received a delivery—a plain, unmarked black envelope slipped through the front gate during the morning staff shift change. Inside was a single digital tablet. When she turned it on, a live video feed played: her elderly aunt and cousin, the last remaining members of her birth family, sitting bound and gagged in a dark, concrete room with a countdown timer ticking on the wall.
Then, Leonor’s voice came through the speakers.
“Valeria, my dear. Nicolás thinks he has won. He thinks he can cast me out like a servant. By tomorrow night, you will disable the biometric bypass from the nursery terminal for exactly five minutes at midnight. If you don't, your family dies. If you tell Nicolás, they die slower. Choose wisely.”
Valeria dropped the tablet, her face turning the color of ash. She sank to the floor of her bedroom, her breath coming in shallow, hysterical gasps. She was a woman of high society, raised on galas and wire transfers; she had no stomach for the visceral horror of cartel executions.
She looked toward the nursery where Mateo was giggling as Sofía sang a traditional folk song while changing his cotton sheets.
If I tell Nicolás, he will use them as bait, Valeria thought, her mind twisting under the pressure of the terror. He will treat them like pawns to trap the Mendozas. He won't care if they die as long as he wins the war.
She picked up the tablet, hiding it beneath the mattress of her bed. Her loyalty to Nicolás had died long ago when their engagement turned into a cold business contract. Her love for Mateo was absolute, but she believed—naively—that Leonor wouldn't hurt her own grandson.
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She just wants to humiliate Nicolás, Valeria convinced herself, her eyes wild with desperation. She just wants him to look weak. If I give her the five minutes, she takes Mateo to Cuernavaca. He will be safe there. He won't be in the middle of a gun battle.
With trembling hands, Valeria walked out of her room and toward the security terminal in the private study, her fingers memorizing the layout of the biometric bypass codes she had seen Nicolás type a thousand times.
