Chapter 8 - BLOOD AT THE MAUSOLEUM
Gabriel moved before Alejandro did.
He stepped between Mateo and the flash drive.
Mateo lifted the pistol higher.
“Do not be stupid.”
Gabriel’s voice was calm.
“You walked into a family cemetery before sunrise with a gun.”
“I think we passed stupid several decisions ago.”
Mateo smiled without humor.
“Alejandro, tell your dog to step aside.”
Alejandro closed his fist around the flash drive.
“How did you know I was here?”
Mateo looked almost disappointed.
“You still think your movements belong to you.”
Alejandro thought of the automatic gate.
The security system had recognized the borrowed vehicle tag.
That recognition had probably triggered a notification.
Mateo continued.
“The house tells me more than it tells you.”
Gabriel shifted slightly.
Mateo aimed the pistol at his chest.
“Do not.”
Gabriel stopped.
Alejandro studied his cousin.
They had grown up together.
Shared vacations.
Fought over soccer games.
Buried Rafael together.
Mateo had stood beside Alejandro at his wedding.
He had toasted Lucía and called her the sister he never had.
Now he stood six meters away aiming a weapon at them.
“Was any of it real?” Alejandro asked.
Mateo’s expression barely changed.
“What?”
“Fifteen years beside me.”
Mateo laughed softly.
“Do not become sentimental now.”
“That is an answer.”
“No.”
Mateo tilted his head.
“It is a correction.”
He gestured with the pistol.
“Put the drive on the floor.”
Alejandro did not move.
“What is on it that scares you this much?”
“You already know.”
“Four hundred and sixty million pesos?”
Mateo smiled.
“That was seven months ago.”
Alejandro’s stomach tightened.
“How much now?”
“Enough that numbers no longer matter.”
Gabriel glanced at Alejandro.
Mateo noticed.
“Do not worry.”
He smiled.
“I did not spend it all.”
“Who else is involved?” Alejandro asked.
Mateo’s eyes flickered.
“Put the drive down.”
“My mother?”
Mateo’s jaw tightened.
“That question is above your emotional capacity this morning.”
Alejandro stepped forward.
The gun shifted toward him.
Gabriel whispered.
“Boss.”
Alejandro stopped.
“Did my mother know about the money?”
Mateo stared at him.
Then he said.
“Elena knows everything she needs to know.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you are getting.”
Alejandro looked at the pistol.
“You are not going to shoot me.”
Mateo smiled.
“Why not?”
“Because if I die here, everyone looks at you.”
“No.”
Mateo’s smile widened.
“If you die here, everyone looks at the armed former federal officer standing beside you.”
Gabriel’s face changed.
Mateo continued.
“A tragic confrontation at the family grave.”
“Two emotional men.”
“One gun registered to Gabriel Vega.”
Gabriel slowly looked at the pistol in Mateo’s hand.
Recognition hit him.
“That is mine.”
Mateo nodded.
“It disappeared from your office two weeks ago.”
Gabriel cursed under his breath.
The plan had been prepared in advance.
Alejandro understood that Mateo had not come here in panic.
He had come with a story already built around their bodies.
Mateo extended his free hand.
“The drive.”
Alejandro looked down at it.
Then he looked past Mateo toward the gate.
“Fine.”
Gabriel turned slightly.
“Alejandro.”
“It is data.”
Alejandro held up the drive.
“It is not worth dying for.”
Mateo relaxed by a fraction.
That was what Alejandro wanted.
He tossed the drive.
Not toward Mateo.
Toward his father’s stone crypt.
Mateo’s eyes followed it instinctively.
Gabriel lunged.
The gun fired.
The sound exploded inside the stone chamber.
Alejandro saw Gabriel spin and hit the wall.
“Gabriel!”
Mateo lost his balance as Gabriel struck him.
The pistol slid across the floor.
Alejandro tackled Mateo.
They hit the stone hard.
Mateo punched him across the jaw.
Alejandro struck back.
Years of buried resentment surfaced without words.
Mateo grabbed a brass candleholder and swung.
Alejandro ducked.
Metal shattered against the wall.
Gabriel groaned behind them.
Alejandro looked toward him for one second.
Mateo used the distraction.
He drove his knee into Alejandro’s ribs.
Alejandro fell.
Mateo scrambled toward the gun.
Gabriel reached it first.
His left shoulder was bleeding.
His right hand closed around the weapon.
He aimed it at Mateo.
“Stop.”
Mateo froze.
Blood spotted his white shirt from a cut near his mouth.
Gabriel’s face was gray.
“On your knees.”
Mateo laughed breathlessly.
“You cannot arrest me.”
“No.”
Gabriel’s finger remained steady on the trigger guard.
“But I can strongly encourage posture.”
Mateo slowly lowered himself.
Alejandro stood and retrieved the flash drive.
He looked at Gabriel’s shoulder.
“You are hit.”
“Through and through.”
“You need a hospital.”
“After we leave.”
Alejandro took out his phone.
Mateo smiled.
“Who are you going to call?”
Alejandro stopped.
Police.
Which police?
Corporate security.
Which security?
Private ambulance.
Owned by whom?
Mateo saw the hesitation.
“That is the problem with discovering your kingdom is hollow.”
He smiled.
“You no longer know which door opens into your house and which opens into mine.”
Alejandro looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel spoke.
“I have one person.”
“Who?”
“Federal prosecutor named Sofía Herrera.”
“Can you trust her?”
“No.”
Alejandro frowned.
Gabriel continued.
“But your father did.”
Mateo’s smile disappeared.
That was enough for Alejandro.
“Call her.”
Gabriel made the call.
Sofía Herrera arrived forty minutes later with two agents who wore no local insignia.
She was in her early fifties, silver threaded through her dark hair, eyes sharp enough to make silence feel like testimony.
She looked at Mateo on his knees.
Then at the gun.
Then at Gabriel’s bloody shoulder.
Finally she looked at Alejandro.
“You look like your father when he was about to make an expensive mistake.”
Alejandro had not heard her name in twenty years.
“You knew him?”
“Well enough to dislike him honestly.”
She gestured to one agent.
“Secure the weapon.”
Mateo stood slowly.
“You have no warrant.”
Sofía looked at him.
“I have an armed incident, an injured witness, and a weapon that may be stolen.”
“That does not give you authority to detain me indefinitely.”
“No.”
Sofía smiled slightly.
“But it gives me enough time to ruin your breakfast.”
Mateo looked at Alejandro.
“This changes nothing.”
Alejandro held up the flash drive.
“I think it changes something.”
Mateo’s expression became calm again.
“That drive is encrypted.”
“We will open it.”
“No.”
Mateo smiled.
“You will try.”
Sofía watched him carefully.
“What is the encryption key?”
Mateo looked at Alejandro.
Then he laughed.
“You really do not know what Lucía did, do you?”
Alejandro stepped closer.
“What are you talking about?”
Mateo’s eyes gleamed.
“The key is not a password.”
“What is it?”
“It is a date.”
Alejandro waited.
Mateo's pistol did not shake.
That detail hurt Alejandro more than the weapon itself.
A frightened man might make a mistake.
A desperate man might hesitate.
Mateo looked prepared.
"Put the drive down," he said.
Gabriel remained between them.
"You shoot him, you do not leave this cemetery."
Mateo smiled thinly.
"You think I came alone?"
Alejandro scanned the darkness beyond the mausoleum.
He saw nothing.
That did not comfort him.
"Why, Mateo?"
"Do not make this emotional."
"You pointed a gun at me."
"Because you never listen until someone forces you."
Alejandro almost laughed.
"You sound like my mother."
For the first time, Mateo's expression changed.
Not anger.
Pain.
It vanished quickly.
"Leave her out of this."
Alejandro heard the pronoun.
Her.
Not Aunt Elena.
Not your mother.
"What are you protecting?"
Mateo stepped forward.
"Give me the drive."
"Does it contain proof you forged my signature?"
"You sign hundreds of things without reading them."
"That was not an answer."
"It was the truth."
The accusation landed because Alejandro knew it was accurate.
He had signed stacks of authorizations pushed toward him between calls, flights, and meetings.
He had trusted systems built by people he loved.
Someone had turned that trust into a weapon.
"Did you send the separation notice to Lucía?"
Mateo looked away for half a second.
Alejandro saw it.
"You did."
"I sent paperwork."
"You destroyed my marriage."
"Your marriage was already breaking."
Alejandro lunged before Gabriel could stop him.
Mateo fired.
The shot exploded inside the stone mausoleum.
Gabriel grunted and dropped against the wall.
Alejandro froze.
Blood spread through Gabriel's shirt near the shoulder.
"Gabriel!"
Mateo's face went white.
"I did not mean—"
Alejandro tackled him.
The pistol skidded beneath a stone bench.
They hit the floor hard.
Mateo drove an elbow into Alejandro's ribs.
Alejandro punched him once.
Then again.
Years of grief moved through his fist.
Mateo stopped fighting long enough to whisper something.
"Rafael knew."
Alejandro grabbed his collar.
"Knew what?"
"About all of it."
"All of what?"
Mateo laughed through blood on his lip.
"The accounts."
Alejandro tightened his grip.
"The theft?"
"The family."
Sirens sounded in the distance.
Gabriel had triggered a silent emergency signal before falling.
Mateo looked toward the mausoleum entrance.
His confidence finally cracked.
"You think your father died because of money?"
Alejandro stared at him.
Mateo leaned closer.
"He died because he learned who I really was."
Mateo leaned closer.
“The date your father discovered your mother was stealing from him.”
Alejandro stopped breathing.
Sofía Herrera’s face changed.
And in that instant, Alejandro realized this conspiracy had not started seven months ago.
May you like
It had started before his father died.
