Chapter 4 - THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SANTIAGO ROBLES
Back at the grand front gates of the Lomas de Chapultepec estate, the sleek black sedan continued to idle, its exhaust pipe puffing faint white clouds into the crisp morning air. The imposter driver checked his wristwatch for the fourth time in five minutes, a bead of nervous sweat trickling down the side of his neck.
Inside the mansion, Valeria Robles paced across the imported Italian marble of the foyer, her expensive diamond-studded bracelet clicking rhythmically against her wrist. She held her smartphone tightly in her manicured hand, staring at the screen in mounting frustration.
"Why isn't he answering?" she muttered to herself, her heart fluttering with a sudden, sharp spike of anxiety.
She had watched him leave the bedroom twenty minutes ago. She had timed his descent down the grand staircase, his departure through the heavy oak doors, and his stroll across the manicured courtyard. He was supposed to be absorbed in his screen, walking blindly toward the trap like a lamb to the slaughter. Yet, the driver at the gate reported that Santiago never reached the vehicle.
Dialing his direct number once more, Valeria pressed the phone to her ear.
“The subscriber you have dialed is currently unavailable or out of service area. Please leave a message after the tone—”
"Damn it!" she hissed, throwing the phone onto a velvet-upholstered armchair.
Just then, the side door opened, and a young, impeccably dressed man stepped into the foyer—Diego, her lover and her partner in the conspiracy. He looked frantic, his designer tie slightly askew.
"Valeria, what’s going on?" Diego whispered urgently, closing the heavy front door behind him. "The driver called me. He said Santiago never showed up at the gate. He vanished somewhere between the front porch and the perimeter wall."
Valeria’s breath hitched in her throat. "That’s impossible! There are security cameras covering every square inch of the perimeter. He couldn't just evaporate!"
"I checked the feed from the eastern gate," Diego replied, his face turning pale. "The feed cut out for exactly forty-two seconds right around the time he left the house. Someone blinded the system."
An icy shiver raced down Valeria’s spine. The illusion of absolute control began to fracture. For a terrifying second, she wondered if Santiago had known all along—if his polite smiles and late-night conference calls over the last few months had been a mask hiding a razor-sharp trap.
"Calm down," Valeria forced herself to say, though her voice shook. "Even if he didn't get in the car, he can't prove anything. The audio recording was destroyed, and Tomás and his little brat of a daughter don't know anything that holds weight in a court of law. If Santiago is hiding, he’s running scared."
"Or," Diego countered grimly, "he’s figuring out how to strip us of every single cent we planned to inherit."
Valeria narrowed her eyes, her panic hardening back into cold, calculating ambition. "If he’s running, we hunt him down before he reaches a lawyer. Call our contacts at the bank. Freeze his secondary accounts before he can initiate a transfer. If he wants to play hide-and-seek in this city, we’ll make sure he never sees the light of day."
Little did she know, her phone calls were no longer private. Across the city, in a high-security conference room overlooking Paseo de la Reforma, Eduardo Vance and a team of forensic accountants were watching every digital footprint Valeria and Diego made in real-time.
On a massive wall-mounted monitor, lines of financial data scrolled downward at breakneck speed. Accounts were flagged, offshore shell companies in the Cayman Islands were exposed, and suspicious wire transfers totaling millions of pesos were highlighted in bright, flashing red.
Santiago sat at the head of the polished mahogany table, sipping a cup of black coffee. He looked calm, collected, and utterly lethal. Beside him stood Mateo, monitoring a secure tablet displaying live perimeter security feeds of the mansion.
"They're moving into damage control, boss," Mateo reported quietly. "Diego just initiated a secure data wipe on his personal laptop from the mansion's Wi-Fi network."
Santiago took a slow sip of his coffee, his eyes locked on the financial spreadsheet tracking his wife's clandestine transactions. "Let them wipe whatever they want. Eduardo already secured a court-ordered asset freeze twenty minutes ago." He looked up, meeting his lawyer's gaze. "Is the trap fully set?"
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Eduardo nodded, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses with a confident smile. "Every account, every property deed, and every communication log is documented and timestamped. When we strike, it won't just be a divorce proceeding, Santiago. It’s going to be a federal indictment for conspiracy to commit murder and corporate fraud."
Santiago stood up, buttoning his suit jacket. "Then let's go pay my loving wife a visit. It's time for me to return from the dead."
