Bank just flagged our credit line.
Call me NOW.
By nine-fifteen, my private assistant texted me: Sir, there are two attorneys here asking for corporate ledgers. Mrs. Salgado is with them.
I read that sentence five times. Mrs. Salgado is with them. She was supposed to be in a hospital bed, recovering from major abdominal surgery. She was supposed to be weak.
When I burst through the glass doors of Salgado Desarrollo forty minutes later, the entire floor went dead silent.
Irma was standing in the center of the lobby. She wore a simple cream blouse and black slacks. She was pale, and she held a hand subtly against her stomach, but her posture was flawless. Mauricio stood a few steps behind her, a silent bodyguard. The shark-eyed lawyer from the hospital stood beside them, holding a stack of printed spreadsheets.
My employees pretended to look at their monitors, but every ear in the room was tuned to us.
“Irma,” I hissed, striding toward her. “What are you doing here?”
She turned. For a fraction of a second, the lobby disappeared, and I saw the girl she used to be—the one who ate street corn with me on the sidewalks, who promised she didn’t care if we were poor as long as we were honest.
Then, the woman I created returned.
“I own forty percent of Salgado Desarrollo,” she said clearly, ensuring her voice carried across the cubicles.
I scoffed, lowering my voice. “On paper. You are embarrassing yourself. Go back to the hospital.”
Her lawyer smiled—a terrifying, bloodless thing. “Paper is where legal ownership lives, Mr. Salgado. We are proceeding to the conference room to review withdrawals from the joint-controlled operating reserves.”
The meeting that followed lasted three agonizing hours.
I tried to dominate it. I interrupted. I demanded. I slammed my hands on the mahogany table. But then the lawyer connected a laptop to the projector.
Every receipt. Every hidden transaction.
They projected the cost of Valeria’s diamond bracelet. The luxury suite in Monterrey. The private yacht rental. The spa days. And worst of all, the timestamped dinner for two at a Michelin-star restaurant on the exact night Irma had been admitted to emergency care.
No one said the word “affair.” They didn’t need to. The receipts painted a masterpiece of my depravity.
Gabriel, my CFO, a man who had worked for me for eleven years, slowly took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He knew the difference between a legitimate executive expense and a man trying to decorate his mistress with company money.
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