Chapter 6 - The Crack in the Porcelain
At 10:15 a.m., a white Mercedes sedan parked directly in front of my house. This time, there were no hired guards. No black SUVs. No roaring engines.
Ofelia Harrington stepped out alone. She looked ten years older than she had the night before. The black silk dress was gone, replaced by a simple, conservative linen suit, and her hair—usually pinned back into a flawless, rigid bun—had a few gray strands falling loose around her temples.
She walked up my porch steps slowly, her heels hitting the wood with a dull, hollow sound. She didn't knock. She just stood behind the screen door, looking through the mesh at me as I opened the main entrance.
"Let me speak to my daughter," she said, her voice missing that sharp, rhythmic authority she had used at the restaurant. It sounded dry. Like old paper.
"Her name is Valeria, Ofelia," I said, staying behind the screen. "And she doesn't have anything to say to you."
"We can settle this, Ernesto," she whispered, her fingers twisting around the strap of her leather handbag. "The family... we are willing to provide Valeria with a separate residence. A estate in the hills. She will have her own allowance, her own freedom. Rodrigo will not see her without her consent. We just need the data your people pulled from the corporate ledger to be returned. My brother... my brother cannot be involved in this."
I looked at her—the woman who had smiled while her son ripped a fistful of hair from my daughter’s scalp. The woman who had spent thirty-four months telling my mija that she was nothing but an accessory to their legacy.
"You sat at that table, Ofelia," I said, my voice perfectly level. "You watched him hurt her. You lifted your wineglass. Do you remember what you said?"
Ofelia’s eyes flickered down, her mouth tightening into a thin line. "It was... a private family matter. Marriages have friction, Ernesto. You’ve been a cop long enough to know that couples say and do things—"
"I’ve been a cop long enough to know a predator when I see one," I said, cutting her off cleanly. "You didn't see a marriage, Ofelia. You saw an exercise in power. You liked it because you’ve spent your whole life doing the same thing to anyone you thought was smaller than you. But you forgot one thing about San Antonio."
She looked up, her brow furrowing. "What?"
May you like
"The people who build the concrete you stand on are the ones who know exactly how much weight it takes to break it. Your noon deadline is now an eleven o'clock deadline. You have forty-five minutes to get your son into central booking, or the Texas Rangers get the files. Move along, Ofelia. You're blocking my light."
I closed the heavy oak door before she could answer, the deadbolt clicking into place with a sound that felt like the closing of a cell door.
