Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5: THE EMPIRE'S SHADOW
The penthouse at the St. Regis New York was a masterpiece of glass and steel, suspended three hundred feet above the glittering chaos of Manhattan. To the world, it was the ultimate symbol of the Salazar family’s untouchable wealth. To me, it was just another gilded cage, and the air inside felt heavy with a suffocating, familiar dread.
Even with Santiago rotting behind bars in Mexico, I couldn't shake the feeling that the walls were closing in again.
"You're tracking his legal team, right? Every phone call, every wire transfer, Sofia?" I paced the length of the Italian marble floor, my heels clicking a frantic rhythm that echoed off the high ceilings. In the corner of the room, ten-month-old Leo slept peacefully in his crib, completely oblivious to the war raging around him.
Sofia Vance, my lead attorney, didn't look up from her encrypted laptop. Her fingers flew across the keyboard like a surgeon performing triage. "Valeria, take a breath. Santiago is in a maximum-security facility in Almoloya. His assets are frozen. His mother is under 24-hour surveillance in a federal ward. There is no legal loophole big enough for him to crawl out of. We broke them."
"Then why does it feel like the floor is about to drop out from under me again?" I whispered, pressing my forehead against the cold glass window. The yellow cabs below looked like tiny, scurrying insects.
The heavy oak door of the penthouse swung open. My father, Ricardo Salazar, walked in. The usual commanding aura that surrounded him seemed fractured. He didn't offer his usual warm smile, nor did he head straight to the crib to check on his grandson. Instead, he pulled a single, heavy manila envelope from his black overcoat and laid it flat on the glass coffee table.
"What is that, Dad?" I asked, my stomach doing a violent, sickening flip.
"Santiago’s father," Ricardo said. His voice dropped to a low, gravelly baritone that chilled the room. "Julian Rivas. The man we were told died in a private Swiss clinic ten years ago. It was a lie, Valeria. The entire terminal illness was a financial smoke screen. He didn't die. He went underground to manage their offshore shadow network. And three hours ago, he surfaced. He just bought out the toxic debt of our primary American shipping partner."
My hands shook as I ripped open the envelope. Inside wasn't a corporate document. It was a single high-resolution photograph of me and Leo, taken yesterday afternoon while we were walking through Central Park. We had been surrounded by five of our best security guards, and none of them had noticed the photographer.
Flipped over, written across the glossy white back in elegant, precise fountain-pen cursive, were seven words:
May you like
A family debt must always be paid in blood.
"He’s not trying to appeal Santiago's sentence, Sofia," I said, the realization hitting me like a physical blow to the chest. "He’s trying to finish what his son started. And he’s starting here, in New York."
