Chapter 7
I grabbed the remote off my desk, turning on the big screen on the wall.
Every channel was the same.
Breaking news.
Maximum security prison breach.
Three inmates dead. Two guards injured.
Doña Graciela Salgado—on trial for kidnapping, fraud, attempted murder, and a dozen other charges—gone.
Vanished into thin air.
The police had no leads. No idea how she’d done it. No idea where she was.
The reporter was saying sources inside the prison believed she’d had help from the outside. That someone had paid a lot of money to get her out.
Héctor, from his own jail cell, was denying everything. But we all knew.
He was the only one with the motive. And the last of the money.
I called the head of security immediately, my hands shaking.
“Quadruple the detail on Sofía,” I said, my voice tight. “Now. I don’t care what it costs. I want eyes on her every second. At school. At my parents’ house. In the car. Everywhere. No exceptions. And I want a full sweep of this building. Every floor. Every office. Every stairwell. If Graciela is out, she’s coming here. Or she’s going after Sofía. We have to be ready.”
I called my mother next, telling her to pick Sofía up from school immediately, to take her to the safe house Carlos had arranged months before, to not tell anyone where they were going, not even family.
I called Carlos, telling him to get to my office as fast as he could.
Then I sat back in my chair, staring at the screen, watching the footage of the prison, the police cars, the reporters, and I felt that old, familiar cold fear creep back into my chest.
Graciela was free.
And she had nothing left to lose.
Her company was gone. Her brother was in prison. Her son was in prison. Her ex-husband was dying. Her reputation was destroyed. She was facing life in prison plus a hundred years if they ever caught her.
She had nothing.
Which meant she had nothing to lose by taking everything from me.
Carlos ran into the office ten minutes later, followed by the security team, all of them armed, all of them tense.
“Okay,” Carlos said, opening his briefcase. “Here’s what we know. Graciela escaped at four this morning. The guards who were supposed to be watching her? Both paid off. One of them is missing too. We believe he’s with her. He’s ex-military. Dangerous. Good with weapons. Good at disappearing. They left the city in a stolen black SUV. The police have roadblocks up everywhere, but it’s Graciela. She has friends. She has money Héctor hid for her. She could be anywhere. Mexico City. The coast. Another country. But we both know she’s not leaving.”
I nodded.
“She’s here,” I said, sure. “She’s in Guadalajara. She won’t leave until she’s done what she came to do. Until she’s hurt me. Until she’s taken the only thing I have left. She wants Sofía, Carlos. That’s all she’s ever wanted. To take her from me. To raise her to be just like her. To win, even if she loses everything else.”
The room went quiet.
We all knew I was right.
“Okay,” Carlos said, turning to the security team. “Here’s the plan. We move Ms. Mendoza to the safe house immediately. No stops. No detours. We have two decoy convoys leaving from different entrances. No one knows which one she’s in except us. We get her to the safe house, we lock it down, we don’t let anyone in or out until Graciela is back in custody. Understood?”
Everyone nodded.
Five minutes later, I was in the back of an armored SUV, surrounded by four armed guards, being driven through the streets of Guadalajara, away from the Langford building, away from the city, toward the safe house in the mountains, an hour outside town.
My phone rang.
It was a blocked number.
I answered.
“Hello, Clara,” Graciela said. Her voice was calm. Too calm. Like we were having Sunday dinner again. Like she hadn’t just escaped from prison. Like she hadn’t tried to kill me a dozen times. “Did you miss me?”
“Where are you, Graciela?” I said, my voice steady, signaling to the security team to start tracing the call. “What do you want?”
Graciela laughed, that sharp, bitter sound.
“What do I want? Oh, I think you know what I want. I want my life back. I want my company back. I want my money back. I want my son back. But most of all… I want Sofía. She’s my blood, Clara. My granddaughter. She belongs with me. Not with a criminal like you. Not with a woman who destroyed her own family. I’m going to get her, Clara. No matter how many guards you hire. No matter how many safe houses you hide her in. I’m going to find her. And when I do? I’m going to raise her to hate you. I’m going to tell her you abandoned her. That you didn’t want her. That you were a terrible mother. And she’ll believe me. Because I’ll be the only mother she’ll ever know.”
“You’ll never get near her,” I said, my voice cold. “You’ll be back in prison by the end of the week. And this time? You’ll never get out.”
“Will I?” Graciela said, amused. “Because I have friends, Clara. Powerful friends. Friends who owe me favors. Friends who are tired of you and your little company and your goody-goody attitude. And I have something else. Something you don’t know about. Something that will destroy you. Something that will make sure no one ever believes a word you say again. Something that will take Sofía from you legally, permanently, with the full weight of the law behind me. You think you won? You think you beat me? You haven’t even started to lose yet. I’ll see you soon, Clara. Very soon. Give my love to my granddaughter.”
She hung up.
The security team looked at me.
“Trace went nowhere,” the lead guard said, frustrated. “Burner phone. Used once. Already destroyed.”
I leaned back against the seat, closing my eyes, my mind racing.
What was she talking about?
What secret did she have?
What could possibly destroy me now, after everything we’d been through, after all the lies she’d already told and been caught telling?
We arrived at the safe house an hour later.
It was a big, modern house, surrounded by high walls and electric fences, hidden in the trees halfway up the mountain, with a full security system, cameras everywhere, a team of eight guards rotating shifts 24/7.
My parents were there. Sofía was there. She ran to me the second I walked in the door, throwing her little arms around my legs, telling me about her day at school, about the picture she’d drawn, about how abuela had made her favorite cookies for snack.
I picked her up, holding her tight, breathing in her smell, thanking God she was safe.
For the next three days, we didn’t leave the safe house.
We watched the news. We waited. We let the police and the security team do their jobs.
But there was no sign of Graciela.
No sightings. No phone calls. No demands.
Nothing.
It was like she’d vanished off the face of the earth.
Carlos came up to the safe house on the fourth day, his face grim, holding a thick stack of papers.
“We found it,” he said, sitting down at the kitchen table across from me, while Sofía played in the other room with my mother. “The secret Graciela was talking about. We got a tip from one of Héctor’s old associates. Graciela spent over a million dollars in the last six months hiring the best geneticists in the country. She paid them to fake a DNA test. A very convincing one. One that will stand up in any court in the country.”
I stared at him, confused.
“Fake a DNA test? What for?”
Carlos took a deep breath.
“She’s claiming Sofía isn’t Tomás’s daughter,” he said, quiet. “She’s claiming you had an affair. That Sofía is another man’s child. That you tricked Tomás into marrying you, tricked the whole family, all to get access to the Salgado money. And she has the ‘proof’—faked DNA tests, faked emails, faked witness statements from men who’ll swear they’re the real father. She’s going to file a petition to have Sofía removed from your custody. She’s going to say you’re an unfit mother, a liar, an adulteress, that you can’t be trusted to raise a child. And with the fake DNA? With the right judge? She might win. She could take Sofía from you, Clara. Permanently. And there’s nothing we can do to stop her from filing. The papers were served at the Langford office an hour ago. The first hearing is day after tomorrow.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
It was brilliant.
Evil.
But brilliant.
Everyone knew Tomás was in prison. Everyone knew our marriage had been a disaster. It would be so easy to believe. So easy for Graciela to paint me as the villain again. The cheating wife. The liar. The unfit mother.
And if a judge believed the fake DNA?
She could take Sofía.
Legally.
With the full weight of the law behind her.
And no one would ever be able to prove the test was fake. Graciela had paid too much. She’d hired too many experts. She’d covered her tracks too well.
I thought of Sofía.
My baby.
The only thing that mattered.
I thought of Graciela raising her. Teaching her to be cruel. Teaching her to lie. Teaching her to hate me.
No.
Not this time.
Not ever.
I stood up, my face hard, my mind already racing, already planning.
“Okay,” I said, looking at Carlos. “She wants to play dirty? Fine. We’ll play dirtier. Get me the best DNA expert in the world. I don’t care where he is. I don’t care what he costs. Fly him here tonight. We’re going to prove that test is fake. We’re going to destroy Graciela’s ‘experts’ on the stand. And while we’re at it? We leak the story of how she paid a million dollars to fake it. We show the bank records. We show the payments. We make sure every person in this country knows exactly what Graciela is willing to do to steal a child from her own mother. We make her look like the monster she is. And then? We find her. Because I’m done waiting. I’m done hiding in this safe house while she’s out there planning to take my daughter. We’re going to hunt her down. And we’re going to end this. Once and for all.”
Carlos nodded, already on his phone.
But I knew, deep down, it wouldn’t be that easy.
Graciela was always three steps ahead.
She’d known we’d get our own expert. She’d known we’d fight the test.
This was just another distraction.
Another way to keep us busy while she made her real move.
I just didn’t know what that real move was.
Not yet.
But I would.
Soon.
Because the next morning, the head of security banged on my bedroom door at five a.m., his face white, his hand shaking.
“Ms. Mendoza,” he said, breathless. “We found Graciela. Or… she found us. Look at the security camera footage from the front gate. From ten minutes ago.”
He held out his tablet.
On the screen, in the middle of the night, Graciela stood right in front of the camera, the ex-guard who’d helped her escape standing right behind her, a gun in his hand.
Graciela was holding something up to the lens.
A drawing.
In bright crayon.
A picture of a little girl with pigtails, under a rainbow, holding hands with a tall woman and a man in a suit.
It was the picture Sofía had drawn in school two days before.
The one she’d left on the kitchen table.
The one that had been inside the locked safe house.
Graciela smiled into the camera, holding up a second piece of paper.
A handwritten note.
Nice safe house, Clara.
May you like
See you tonight.
Bring Sofía.
