I am Elena Van der Hoven, the sole heir to the largest lithium and telecommunications empire in Europe.
I hid myself away to find real love. Someone who wouldn’t see me as just a number. Someone who wouldn’t want my last name or what it could buy. And I found him: Roberto Garza, with his weary smile and his hands stained with ink and work. He loved me for who I was. I loved him for the way he made me feel safe.
But his family… his family had just made the most expensive mistake of their lives.
They kept the house. They kept the car. They kept the furniture and the watches Roberto collected out of nostalgia. They had no idea that I owned the bank that supported their mortgages, their debts, and, very soon, their miserable lives.
I walked in the rain to the corner, without an umbrella, without a phone. Berta had snatched it from me hours earlier, with a triumphant smile.
“Roberto was paying for it,” he said. “It’s not yours anymore.”
I searched for a phone booth like someone looking for an emergency exit. There was still one left, old and rusty, attached to an Oxxo convenience store. I stepped inside, smelled the damp metal, and dialed a number I hadn’t used in three years. A number only three people in the world knew.
—Hello? —a deep, professional voice answered on the first ring.
I swallowed. I breathed. And I let gentle Elena die.
—Arturo… it’s me.
There was silence on the other end. A silence heavy with surprise… and relief
“Miss Elena,” Arturo Salazar, my family’s head of security and my father’s right-hand man, said, his voice trembling slightly. “My God… we’ve been looking for you. Where are you?”
—I’m in Monterrey. Roberto… died.
Another silence, this time one of respect.
—I’m so sorry, miss. My condolences.
—Thank you. But I’m not calling to cry. I’m calling because I need you to activate the protocol.
—What protocol?
I looked toward the Garza house. The lights were still on, as if the duel were an event that had already ended. I could imagine them pouring themselves Roberto’s expensive wine, celebrating that they had “won.”
—Nemesis, Arthur.
I heard him straighten up on the other side, as if he had recognized a code that is only used when there is nothing soft left
—Miss… that protocol implies hostile takeover and total elimination of targets. Who is the target?
—The Garza family. I want to buy everything: their debts, their mortgages, their businesses, their partners. I want to own the air they breathe. And I want a car here in ten minutes. I’m wet and cold.
—Right away, Mrs. Van der Hoven.
I hung up and rested my forehead against the dirty glass of the booth. For the first time in three years, I allowed myself to recall the last forty-eight hours like a horror movie.
The funeral had been a farce. Doña Berta, in a designer black dress and enormous glasses, wept perfect tears in front of Roberto’s business partners. Roberto owned a successful logistics company, modest but his pride and joy. I, in a corner, wearing a simple secondhand dress, looked like a mistake in the scene.
Berta wouldn’t let me sit in the front.
“That place is for beloved family,” she whispered to me. “You… you were just a pastime.”
At the wake, Carlos approached me chewing gum, with the confidence of someone who has always felt like he owns other people’s things.
“I hope you have a plan B, Elena. Because as soon as Roberto is six feet under, you’re out of here. Don’t think you’re getting anything. Roberto didn’t leave an updated will. Everything goes to Mom.”
“I don’t want your money,” I said, my throat cracking. “I just want to say goodbye to my husband.”
“Yeah, right,” he spat. “They all say the same thing, gold diggers.”
Lucía was worse. With her frustrated influencer smile, she approached with a glass of red wine… and spilled it on my dress.
“Oops, how clumsy,” he laughed. “Well, at least it matches your dark and tainted future.”
Nobody defended me. Roberto’s friends looked the other way. I was invisible.
And then came the house. We came back from the cemetery. I just wanted to lie down in the bed I shared with him, smell his pillow, hug the void he left. But Berta had already changed the locks.
“What are you doing here?” he yelled from the doorway when I tried to put the key in. “This isn’t your house anymore.”
—Berta, please… it’s nighttime, it’s raining. Let me in alone today. I’m leaving tomorrow.
“Not a minute,” Carlos yelled. “Get your rags out.”
Carlos came out with a black bag and threw it at my feet.
—There’s your severance pay. Now get out of here before I call the police for trespassing.
