Chapter 2 - The Ledger of Lies
"Mateo, I need every commercial account under Mendoza Freight frozen by sunrise," I said, my voice eerily calm as I descended the concrete stairs toward the hospital basement.
Mateo Cruz had been my father’s corporate counsel before becoming mine. He was one of the few men in the state who remembered that Mendoza Freight was never built by Ricardo’s brilliance; it had been funded entirely by my late father’s logistics warehouse empire. When my father passed away, I had transferred forty-nine percent of the operating shares into Ricardo's name to bolster his fragile male ego, retaining fifty-one percent under a blind trust that Ricardo mistakenly believed had lapsed upon my thirty-fifth birthday.
"Mariana?" Mateo’s voice grew alert. "What happened? You sounded exhausted when we spoke yesterday."
"Ricardo is currently on the fifth floor of San Lucas Hospital with Daniela Torres," I said, pushing through the heavy double doors into the chilly parking garage. "She is in labor with his child. And Elvira has been faking post-operative complications to keep me tethered to her bedside while Ricardo routes our marital capital into private holding accounts."
Mateo let out a low whistle. "He really pulled the trigger on the offshore entity? I ran a routine sweep on the commercial registry two hours ago. Ricardo filed an emergency petition claiming your absence and incapacity due to family distress, seeking to pledge the central distribution center as collateral for a five-million-dollar private liquidity loan."
My jaw tightened. The central distribution center was the beating heart of the company—three hundred thousand square feet of prime real estate inherited from my father. If Ricardo mortgaged it, the proceeds would vanish into an untraceable shell corporation in Panama, leaving me with twenty million dollars in corporate debt while he flew off into the sunset with Daniela.
"Can he execute the pledge without my physical signature?" I asked.
"Not legally," Mateo replied sharply. "He submitted a notarized power of attorney dated yesterday. Did you sign anything while at his mother's bedside?"
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I closed my eyes, recalling the stack of 'insurance authorization forms' Elvira had dramatically thrust into my hands between simulated groans of agony yesterday evening. Just sign these medical waivers, Mariana dear, my vision is too blurred.
"He forged my assent through his mother," I whispered, rage hardening into steel. "Mateo, call the district prosecutor's commercial fraud division. And bring the original incorporation charters from my safety deposit box. My husband thinks I'm an obedient housewife who doesn't know how to read a balance sheet. Tomorrow morning, we're going to show him who actually owns the ground he walks on."
