Chapter 12 - THE BREAK-IN
I told Tasha to lock herself in the supply office and call 911.
Then I looked at Diego.
“Who is inside my building?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said Mateo.”
“I said Victor told him to go. I don’t know if he did.”
Police reached the building before I did.
The back-office window was shattered. A filing cabinet had been pulled open. My desk drawers were dumped across the floor.
Nothing obvious was missing.
Then Tasha checked the small fireproof cabinet where we kept backup corporate seals and notarized originals.
The cabinet door was open.
My company seal was gone.
So was a packet of blank letterhead.
Security footage showed a hooded man entering through the broken window.
He kept his face down.
But when he climbed back out, his jacket caught on the glass.
The hood slipped.
Mateo.
I felt no triumph.
Only exhaustion.
“Three days,” I said.
“That does not improve it.”
Police took the footage.
An hour later, Rosa called me screaming.
“You’re ruining Mateo’s life!”
“He broke into my office.”
“He was trying to retrieve family property!”
“My company seal is not family property.”
“You married Diego. Everything became family property!”
There it was again. The belief under everything.
My work belonged to them because I was a wife.
My money belonged to them because Diego was a husband.
My boundaries were disrespect.
My refusal was violence.
I said, “Rosa, listen carefully. I am not your family bank.”
She went quiet.
Then her voice changed.
“You think this ends with Mateo?”
“What does that mean?”
“You don’t know my son as well as you think.”
She hung up.
Ten minutes later, Nadia forwarded me a court filing.
Diego had petitioned for a temporary order restricting me from selling or transferring certain marital assets.
Included in his asset list was my father’s twelve-acre property.
Separate property.
Inherited years before the marriage.
May you like
And attached to the filing was a deed I had never seen before.
A deed showing Diego as co-owner.
