Chapter 19 - MATEO’S SECRET
Mateo had told enough truth to make us stop asking certain questions.
That was his mistake.
The forty-eight thousand dollars was not meant for the family’s business debt.
It was meant to cover Mateo’s private gambling losses.
He had been betting through an offshore site and borrowing money from people who did not send polite collection letters.
Rosa knew.
Diego knew part of it.
Victor knew all of it.
The six-hundred-thousand-dollar loan would have saved the automotive debt, refinanced Rosa’s guarantees, paid Victor his fee, and quietly erased Mateo’s gambling problem.
Everyone had a rescue package.
Everyone except me.
I was the package.
When confronted through counsel, Mateo admitted the truth.
His cooperation became far less heroic after that.
He had broken into my office to steal the company seal because Victor promised the money would keep dangerous creditors away from him.
For the first time, I understood why he had looked so scared after the dinner.
He was not afraid of me.
He was afraid the plan had failed.
What mattered to me was simpler.
The forged deed was removed from the path of my property rights through the legal process.
The loan never funded.
My company remained mine.
Diego signed the marital settlement.
Rosa sold the Vargas house to address debts that had been hidden for years.
Mateo moved into a small apartment and entered treatment for gambling addiction after his attorney and family finally stopped pretending his problem was bad luck.
And me?
I went back to work.
Two hundred guests.
Three courses.
No one asked me to carry a plate to a grown man because he was too busy playing video games.
Near the end of the night, Tasha found me in the kitchen.
“You know what’s funny?” she said.
“What?”
“That sentence started all of this.”
“What sentence?”
She smiled.
“He has hands and feet.”
I laughed for the first time without bitterness.
Then Nadia walked in holding her phone.
“Elena,” she said, “the final dissolution order just posted.”
My marriage was officially over.
May you like
I stared at the screen.
And realized I felt nothing but relief.
