“Add everything to the complaint,” I said.
At 11:28, Andrés called.
I answered on speakerphone.
“What did you do, Mariana?”
“I left.”
“Don’t mess with me. My cards aren’t working. The bank says there’s a hold. My finance director is going crazy.”
“He must be.”
“You’re my wife.”
“No. I was your wife when you hit me. Now I’m the representative of the main creditor.”
There was silence.
My father spoke then.
“And you should be afraid, Andrés.”
Andrés’s voice changed.
“Don Alejandro, this is a family misunderstanding.”
“No. A family misunderstanding is arguing at a meal. You hit my daughter, tried to accuse her of theft, and used my collateral to keep a dead company afloat.”
After hanging up, Julia received another alert.
“They tried to move money again.”
“To Brenda?”
“No. To Mercedes Armenta.”
The night opened like a rotten box.
Mercedes was diverting money from a foundation for personal purchases. Andrés was paying private expenses with fictitious suppliers. And the emerald necklace, the same one I supposedly stole, had been taken from the vault five days earlier by Mercedes.
The empty box. The broken table. Brenda feigning fear. Andrés demanding I kneel.
It was all a setup.
They wanted to frame me as a thief before I could report the embezzlement.
At 2:30 in the morning, Brenda called from an unknown number.
“Mariana, I had nothing to do with the necklace.”
“Talk.”
“Mercedes planned it. She said that if you were accused of stealing, your father would pay to avoid a scandal.”
“And you agreed?”
She cried.
“I didn’t think Andrés was going to hit you.”
“But you did think they were going to destroy me.”
She remained silent.
“Send me messages, audios, receipts. Everything.”
Twenty minutes later, the files arrived.
An audio recording of Mercedes said: “If Mariana turns out to be a thief, Alejandro Escalante won’t make a sound. He’s too proud.”
My father listened to it twice.
At six in the morning, the first headlines appeared.
Grupo Armenta under urgent audit for financial irregularities.
CEO Andrés Armenta suspended after accusations of embezzlement.
And at seven twenty, Mercedes called me.
“Stupid girl. You don’t know what you did.”
I smiled.
“Yes, I do. I stopped paying for your lie.”
But the worst was still hidden inside the mansion…
PART 3
I returned to the mansion that same afternoon, but not as a wife.
I entered with attorney Ríos, Julia Mena, two security guards, and a notary. The door opened because the property was linked to the trust my father had used to bail out the Armenta family. Andrés called it “my house,” but the deeds told a much less elegant story.
Mercedes was waiting for us in the foyer, dressed in black and wearing pearls, as if mourning could somehow render her innocent.
“Are you here to steal more?” she spat.
I glanced at the velvet box on the console.
“No. I came for an inventory.”
The notary explained that they would document assets and evidence. Mercedes shouted that they couldn’t enter her rooms.
Julia smiled.
“Yes, we can.”
The search was silent and brutal.
In a locked drawer in Mercedes’s dressing room, they found receipts from the foundation, forged invoices, jewelry appraisals, and, wrapped in silk, the emerald necklace.
The same necklace she swore I had stolen.
No one spoke.
I placed the empty box next to the jewel.
“Be careful,” I told him. “A woman like me could tarnish it.”
For the first time in four years, Mercedes wasn’t insulted.
In Andrés’s office, we found more: a second cell phone, hotel receipts, messages with Brenda, messages with her mother, and a draft lawsuit. In that document, they said I was unstable, that I had stolen family jewels, and that I should sign a separation agreement relinquishing any rights to the company.
The hit may not have been planned.
But my humiliation certainly was.
That’s when my last bit of guilt vanished.
“I want charges for every lie we can prove,” I told Ríos.
A week later, Andrés appeared on the news, not as a businessman, but as someone under investigation. Mercedes walked behind him wearing sunglasses. Brenda entered through another door with her lawyer and ended up declaring that the whole thing had been orchestrated by the Armenta family.
People on social media flooded the comments with emerald emojis.
The divorce was public, painful, and necessary.
Andrés initially said I was exaggerating. Then, when the audios surfaced, he requested mediation.
I agreed to see him three months later, in a formal courtroom, with lawyers present and a recording.
He arrived thinner, wearing an expensive suit, with tired eyes. Without Brenda. Without Mercedes. Without an audience.
“Mariana,” he said.
I didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry.”
I waited.
“I’m sorry I hit you. I’m sorry I accused you. I’m sorry I participated in the necklace incident.”
“You participated,” I repeated.
He lowered his gaze.
“Yes. I thought that if you were accused, your father would quietly negotiate to protect your name and the company.”
“Did you think destroying me was a temporary strategy?”
He closed his eyes.
“S”
