Chapter 5 — The House in Las Lomas
Renata did not return to the apartment she shared with Alonso.
Lucía placed her in a guarded hotel room while investigators searched the Ibarra offices.
At seven in the morning, Renata received a photograph.
The front gates of the family mansion in Las Lomas stood open.
Federal vehicles filled the circular driveway.
Agents carried boxes from the house.
Renata stared at the image while drinking coffee she could barely taste.
For six years, that mansion had been Evangelina’s kingdom.
The first time Alonso brought Renata there, Evangelina had examined her shoes before looking at her face.
At Christmas, she seated Renata at the far end of the table beside the kitchen door.
At family photographs, she positioned her behind taller relatives.
When Renata suffered a miscarriage during the second year of the marriage, Evangelina visited the hospital and said, “Perhaps this is God correcting a mistake.”
Alonso had stood beside the window and said nothing.
Renata had told herself grief made people cruel.
Now she knew cruelty had simply made Evangelina honest.
At nine, Lucía entered the room carrying a tablet.
“They found a hidden safe.”
“What was inside?”
“Passports, cash, corporate seals, and blank forms bearing your copied signature.”
Renata looked away.
Lucía sat beside her.
“There is more.”
She opened a scanned document.
It was a life insurance policy.
Renata Álvarez de Ibarra.
Beneficiary: Alonso Ibarra.
Value: forty million pesos.
The policy had been signed eight months earlier.
Renata’s signature was forged.
Her blood seemed to turn cold.
“I never applied for this.”
“We know.”
“Why would they—”
She stopped.
Three months earlier, Alonso had insisted they spend a weekend at a remote ranch in Hidalgo. He had seemed unusually affectionate. He arranged horseback riding despite knowing Renata had never ridden.
The trip was canceled because she developed a fever.
Two months later, he suggested a sailing excursion near Cancún.
Renata refused because she had an audit deadline.
At the time, she believed he was trying to repair the marriage.
Now each invitation returned with a darker shape.
Lucía placed another paper in front of her.
It was an email from Evangelina to Alonso.
The subject line read: Final solution.
The body contained one sentence.
After the anniversary, she will no longer be a risk.
Renata felt the room narrow.
“Does ‘she’ mean me?”
“We need context before making that claim.”
“It means me.”
Lucía did not disagree.
A knock sounded.
Investigator Reyes entered.
“We arrested Víctor Salgado.”
Renata recognized the name.
The security contractor seen leaving the warehouse with Alonso.
“Did he confess?”
“Not yet. But we found Rafael’s watch in a storage unit rented under Salgado’s name.”
Renata covered her mouth.
Reyes continued.
“We also recovered photographs of you.”
“What kind of photographs?”
“You leaving your apartment. Entering banks. Visiting your doctor.”
The fear arrived slowly.
Not as panic.
As clarity.
She had been watched.
For months, perhaps longer.
“Where is Alonso?”
“Missing.”
Renata stood.
“He was at the restaurant.”
“He left through the kitchen during the confusion. His driver claims he ordered him to go home, but Alonso never arrived.”
“And Evangelina?”
“Still at the mansion. She says she knows nothing.”
Renata almost laughed.
Evangelina always knew something.
“Can I go there?”
“No.”
“I know where she hides records.”
Reyes shook his head.
“The house has been searched.”
“Not the chapel.”
He stopped.
The private chapel had been built behind the garden, a white stone structure Evangelina used for family baptisms, memorials, and carefully staged displays of devotion.
Renata remembered a Christmas dinner three years earlier.
Evangelina had disappeared into the chapel with an accountant. When Renata entered unexpectedly, they were kneeling near the altar.
Not praying.
Moving floor tiles.
“There is a compartment beneath the second pew,” Renata said.
Reyes immediately called the search team.
Forty minutes later, he received a reply.
Inside the compartment, agents found ledgers, bearer bonds, encrypted drives, and a small metal box.
The box contained Rafael’s missing phone.
It also contained a handwritten list of dates.
Renata’s anniversary.
Her birthday.
The planned ranch trip.
The sailing trip.
And beside the date of Evangelina’s wedding anniversary dinner, one word had been written in red ink.
Proof.
Renata stared at the photograph of the list.
The same word she had whispered to Alonso.
The same word that had drained the color from his face.
Lucía looked at her.
“Renata, what did you think ‘proof’ meant?”
“The proof of the fraud.”
Reyes placed the tablet down.
“To Alonso, it may have meant something else.”
Renata looked toward the hotel window.
Far below, the city moved as if nothing had changed.
May you like
Somewhere in it, her husband was running.
And somewhere in Evangelina’s records was a plan that had been scheduled to end with Renata’s death.
