“And this scar?” I asked gently, my thumb brushing a deep, star-shaped bullet wound right above his collarbone. “What happened here?”
Mateo’s face hardened, his dark eyes turning into cold flint.
“That bullet was fired ten years ago during a raid on an illegal offshore shipping cartel in Port Crest,” Mateo said softly. “The cartel was bribing federal judges and laundering fifty million dollars stolen from a private manufacturing estate. The woman who ordered the hit on my squad—and the woman whose name is on the sealed indictment in my military folder—is your mother, Doña Teresa.”
Chapter 2: The Ten-Year Cold Case
The air in the room went ice-cold. I stumbled back against the velvet headboard, my hands flying to my mouth.
Doña Teresa.
Ten years ago, my father had died suddenly of a supposed “cardiac arrest,” leaving our family factories, real estate, and fifty million dollars in liquid capital under my mother’s sole administrative control. For a decade, Teresa had ruled our family empire with an iron fist, treating me like a puppet while squandering millions on her elite social circle.
