Chapter 3 - Blood on the Vineyards
The sun was barely cresting the rolling hills of San Miguel de Allende when I parked my truck back at the Armenta estate. The sprawling colonial-style hacienda looked picturesque from a distance, its white stucco walls and terracotta roof tiles bathed in golden morning light. But beneath its polished exterior, the house was a rotting tomb.
I walked through the heavy wooden front doors without making a sound. The scent of melted wax and fading lilies still lingered in the grand living room where Camila’s empty coffin rested on wooden trestles. The funeral wasn't scheduled until the afternoon, giving me a narrow window of time.
I bypassed the living room and headed straight down the dark, wood-paneled hallway toward my father’s old study.
The door was locked.
Without hesitation, I reached into my coat, pulled out a heavy brass key ring—the one Camila had secretly hidden inside the lining of our winter luggage six months ago, labeled with a code only we knew—and slipped the master key into the antique brass keyhole. It turned with a satisfying, heavy click.
The study smelled of old leather, pipe tobacco, and bourbon. It was the room where my father had built the Armenta wine empire before his mysterious death two years ago—a death my mother had rushed through just as quickly as she was now rushing Camila’s funeral.
I walked straight to the life-sized portrait of my grandfather, Mateo Armenta, hanging behind the massive mahogany desk. With a firm push on the left gilded frame, the heavy painting swung outward on hidden hinges, revealing the recessed electronic safe built into the stone wall.
Teresa believed this safe required a six-digit biometric scan and a numerical combination only she and Rodrigo possessed. She didn't know that three years ago, while repairing the electrical wiring in the study, I had installed a secondary override circuit wired directly to my own workshop.
I punched a sequence into the small keypad hidden beneath the desk drawer.
Bip. Bip. Click.
The heavy steel door of the safe swung open with a deep, echoing sigh.
Inside wasn’t just family jewelry or emergency cash. It was a complete archive of corporate corruption. Neatly stacked ledgers, offshore bank statements from Grand Cayman accounts, duplicate corporate seals, and signed contracts bearing forged signatures of my deceased father.
I pulled out a thick ledger labeled Armenta Vineyards - Restructuring & Asset Transfer (2024-2026).
As I flipped through the pages, my stomach churned. For the past three years, while I was living in Monterrey managing our northern distribution hubs, Rodrigo and Teresa had been systematically looting the company. They had taken out multi-million-dollar loans using the vineyards and our ancestral lands as collateral, funneled the capital through shell companies registered in Panama, and prepared to sell the entire estate to a predatory foreign conglomerate called VinoGlobal Corp.
And Camila had found out.
Tucked inside the back cover of the ledger was a handwritten notepad belonging to my wife. Her precise, elegant handwriting detailed exact transaction numbers, dates when fake invoices were generated, and a chilling final note written just four days before her alleged death:
“Teresa and Rodrigo aren’t just selling the land. They killed the distribution deal Julián negotiated in Monterrey to force a bankruptcy. If I don't give the audit report to Julián when he returns on Friday, I won't live to see our son born. They know I copied the hard drive.”
Tears blurred my vision, hot and sharp, but I blinked them away. There was no room for grief right now. Grief was a luxury reserved for after the war was won.
Footsteps echoed softly in the hallway outside the study. Heavy, measured footsteps.
I quickly slid the ledger inside my coat, pushed the heavy portrait back into place, and stepped behind the velvet curtain of the French doors just as the study key turned in the lock.
The door creaked open.
Through a narrow gap in the crimson fabric, I saw my mother step into the room. She was wearing a tailored black mourning suit, her face expressionless as she walked over to the safe. She punched in her combination, reached inside to grab a velvet pouch of emergency bearer bonds, and paused.
Her fingers hovered over the empty space where the Panama ledger had rested just two minutes prior.
Teresa froze. Her head snapped up, her sharp, predatory eyes scanning the empty room. She slammed the safe door shut, her breath hitching as a cold realization settled over her features.
“Rodrigo!” she shrieked, her voice cutting through the silent corridors like a whip. “Get in here right now!”
Within seconds, heavy footsteps pounded down the hall, and my brother burst through the door, looking disheveled, his navy-blue jacket half-buttoned and a fresh strip of medical tape covering the scratch on his neck.
“What? What is it, Mother?” Rodrigo panted.
“The ledger,” Teresa hissed, her face pale with fury. “The Panama file is gone.”
Rodrigo stared at the open safe, his face draining of all color. “Gone? Who—who could have taken it? The doors were locked!”
“Julián,” Teresa whispered, her eyes narrowing into slits of pure venom. “It was Julián. He didn't come back from Monterrey just to mourn. He came back to destroy us.”
“Then we finish it today,” Rodrigo said, his voice dropping into a menacing register. “We bury Camila this afternoon, and before the sun sets, we take care of her husband the same way.”
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I stood silently behind the curtain, my hand resting inside my coat pocket, fingers wrapped firmly around the cold, metallic weight of the navy-blue button I had torn from my brother’s jacket.
Let them try, I thought. The grave they dug for Camila is big enough for both of them.
