She stood up. She was weak, her body visibly trembling from the physical toll of her ordeal, but her posture was unyielding. She looked down at me like a judge delivering a death sentence.
“You thought you were untouchable because you have money. But money only buys silence from people who want it. I don’t want your money anymore, Alejandro. I want your ruin.”
“Mariana, please,” I begged, standing up to approach her, my hands raised in surrender. “We can fix this. I’ll sign everything over to you voluntarily. Just call off the feds. Tell them it was a mistake. Tell them it was a disgruntled employee.”
“It’s too late for that,” she said, stepping back, avoiding my touch as if I were coated in venom. “The warrants were signed yesterday morning.”
Before I could process her words, the distant, muffled sound of tires gripping the gravel driveway outside echoed through the quiet house. Then another. And another.
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.
I rushed to the grand bay windows of our living room and parted the heavy velvet curtains. Through the tinted glass, I watched three black, unmarked SUVs tear down the driveway, their tires tearing up the manicured lawn. They didn’t stop at the gate. They parked in a tactical formation, completely blocking my escape.
Men and women in tactical vests with bright yellow lettering emblazoned across their backs began spilling out of the vehicles.
FBI. IRS-CI.
“No, no, no,” I panicked, spinning around to face Mariana. “What did you do? What else did you give them?!”
Mariana walked calmly toward the front foyer, completely ignoring my breakdown. She reached for her trench coat hanging by the door, slipping it over her shoulders with slow, deliberate movements. She picked up a small designer suitcase that had been tucked away in the corner—she had already been packed before I even walked through the door.
“You always said that in business, timing is everything,” she said, her hand resting on the brass doorknob. “I timed my discharge from the hospital perfectly. I wanted to be here to look you in the eyes when the walls fell down.”
“Mariana, you can’t leave me here like this!” I screamed, sprinting toward her as the heavy, rhythmic thuds of federal agents marching up our front steps began to vibrate through the floorboards.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Federal Agents! Open the door!” a booming voice echoed from the porch.
Mariana turned the doorknob from the inside, opening it just wide enough to slip through, stepping out into the cool morning air just as the lead agent lifted a heavy steel battering ram. She didn’t look at the agents, and they didn’t stop her—she had clearly given them exactly what they wanted, and she was no longer their target.
But just before she stepped off the porch and out of my life forever, she stopped. She turned her head slightly, looking at me through the gap in the doorway, a look of profound, chilling pity on her face.
“Oh, and Alejandro?” she whispered over the din of the shouting agents. “The photos and the fraud are just what I gave the government. There’s one more document in that folder. The one at the very bottom. The one I didn’t send to the police… yet.”
My breath hitched. “What document?”
The lead agent shoved the door open, throwing me backward onto the marble floor. As a heavy boot pressed firmly into the small of my back and the cold steel of handcuffs ratcheted tightly around my wrists, my eyes locked onto the black folder on the dining room table.
The wind from the open door blew the top pages away, revealing a single, brightly colored document at the very bottom. It bore the logo of a prominent medical research lab, and across the top, in bold, red letters, were the words: TOXICOLOGY SCREENING REPORT: ALEJANDRO VANCE.
As the agent read me my Miranda rights, Mariana’s final words echoed in my mind, turning my blood to absolute ice:
“Let’s see if you can survive what you’ve been putting in my tea for the last six months.”
