Chapter 28 - Blood on the Marble
The next morning, Alejandro left the hidden mountain safe house, accompanied by only two heavily armed guards. He had to return to the main mansion in San Pedro to retrieve the encrypted hard drives hidden beneath the floorboards of his study—the digital ledgers that contained enough evidence to completely dismantle the cartel networks across northern Mexico.
"Lock the steel doors. Do not open them for anyone but me," Alejandro instructed Valeria before he left, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead. "I will be back before sunset."
The drive back to the city was tense and silent. When they arrived at the grand estate, the property seemed eerily quiet. The perimeter guards Alejandro had left behind were nowhere to be seen.
"Something is extremely wrong," Vargas muttered, drawing his weapon as they approached the massive front doors.
They breached the entryway, their boots crunching on the beautiful marble floors. The house had been completely ransacked. Expensive paintings were torn from the walls, furniture was violently overturned, and the bodies of Alejandro’s loyal guards lay motionless on the stairs. El Escorpión’s men had already hit the house.
"Clear the rooms!" Alejandro shouted, sprinting directly toward his private study in the east wing.
He kicked the heavy oak doors open and froze. The study had been completely destroyed, but sitting behind Alejandro’s massive mahogany desk was a man he knew very well. It was Ignacio, one of Alejandro’s oldest and most trusted lieutenants, a man who had helped him build the empire from the ground up.
Ignacio was holding the encrypted hard drive in his hands, a smoking pistol resting on the desk in front of him.
"Ignacio," Alejandro breathed, a wave of profound betrayal washing over him. "You sold us out."
"You went soft, Alejandro," Ignacio replied coldly, standing up from the chair. "You stopped moving product. You started caring more about a poor maid and a traumatized kid than the business. El Escorpión promised me the entire Monterrey distribution route if I delivered the ledgers and handed over the estate."
"You are a traitor," Alejandro growled, raising his weapon.
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"I am a survivor," Ignacio countered, raising his own pistol.
The two men fired at the exact same moment. The deafening roar of the gunshots echoed terribly through the ruined mansion, shattering the silence and staining the beautiful marble with fresh blood.
