That was when I knew I had him. Not because he confessed. Men like Sergio rarely confess when they can still negotiate. But because he switched from denial to containment, and people only do that when the lie has already started bleeding out. I took a sip of coffee that had gone lukewarm and glanced at Ricardo’s message on my screen: Keep them talking. I’m five minutes away.
“No,” I said. “We’re doing it in front of everyone because you were planning to do it in front of everyone too.”
The road outside the house was quiet except for the wind pushing through the trees at the property line. Somewhere behind the fondita, a cook dropped a stack of plates and muttered an apology, but even that felt distant. All my attention narrowed onto the camera feed and the knot of faces clustered outside my gate. I could almost feel the moment my words started assembling themselves in their heads.
“You wanted this crowd there for cover,” I continued. “Your mother kept insisting on her birthday party at my house because she wanted witnesses. She wanted noise, food, cake, music, relatives, and all the pressure in the world piled onto me so I’d sign whatever papers you slid in front of me and smile while I did it.”
Ofelia laughed then, but it came out wrong. It wasn’t offended. It was brittle, the kind of laugh rich women use right before their control slips and they don’t know whether to insult you or beg. “That is insane,” she said. “What papers?”
I opened the folder on the table and pulled out a printed screenshot, though nobody outside could see it. I could. And that was enough. “The papers your son and Mauricio Ortega discussed in my office last Thursday at 7:14 p.m. The ones about adding Sergio as co-owner through a marital asset adjustment and using the equity line on the property after the transfer cleared.”
The name hit like a stone.