PART 3: The Snake in the Palace
I didn't knock. I kicked the side kitchen door so hard the wooden frame splintered, banging loudly against the interior wall.
The music inside the house instantly cut off. The laughter stopped, replaced by startled gasps. I walked through the pristine, marble-tiled kitchen, leaving tracks of mud and filth on the spotless floor. Valeria trembled beside me, terrified of the repercussions, but I held her hand with an iron grip.
As we entered the grand living room, the scene before me made my stomach turn.
There was Roberto, dressed in a designer silk shirt, holding a glass of expensive scotch. Surrounding him were his wife, Sofia, and a dozen of their affluent friends, all draped in jewelry and fine clothes. The tables were overflowing with premium cuts of meat, seafood, and high-end liquor—the very food my wife had been forced to pick out of the trash bins just minutes prior.
"What the hell is going on here?!" Roberto shouted, turning around with an angry scowl. "Who broke the—"
The words caught in his throat. His face drained of all color, turning a sickly shade of white. The glass of scotch slipped from his fingers, shattering on the Italian marble floor.
"G... Gabriel?" Roberto stammered, his eyes darting frantically from me to Valeria, and then to the bags I had left near the gate. "You're... you're back? But your contract—"
"My contract ended early, brother," I said, stepping forward. The entire room fell into a suffocating silence. "You look like you've seen a ghost. Or did you think the forged death certificate you showed my wife would keep me buried at sea forever?"
Sofia, Roberto’s wife, stepped forward, her eyes flashing with venom. "Roberto, why is this dirty woman inside the house? And who cares if your brother is back? This is our house. Get them out of here, they smell like garbage!"
"Our house?" I let out a dark, humorless laugh that made several guests step back in fear. "Every single brick of this house was paid for by the skin of my back, the sweat of my brow, and the blood I spilled working eighty-hour weeks in the belly of a cargo ship. I sent one hundred thousand pesos every single month. And you took it, built this mansion, and put my wife and child in a shed to eat trash?"
The guests began whispering frantically among themselves. Roberto realized his carefully constructed reputation was vaporizing in seconds. He tried to adopt a mask of bravado.
"Gabriel, calm down, you don't understand the full story," Roberto lied smoothly, stepping closer and lowering his voice. "Let’s talk about this privately. Don't make a scene in front of my guests. Valeria is... she lost her mind after you left. She spent all the money on gambling, so I had to take her in out of charity—"
Before he could finish his sentence, my fist connected with his jaw.
The force of the punch sent Roberto crashing backward into a glass coffee table, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Sofia screamed in terror, and several men stepped forward to intervene.
"Step back!" I roared, pointing a finger at them. My eyes were wild, fueled by three years of suppressed exhaustion and unmatched fury. "Anyone who steps between me and this piece of trash is going to sleep in an ambulance tonight!"
Nobody moved. Roberto groaned on the floor, clutching his bleeding mouth.
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I looked down at him with utter disgust. "This isn't over, Roberto. You took everything from my family. I promise you, by the time I am done, you will know exactly what it feels like to beg for scraps."
I turned to Valeria, gently taking Mateo back into my arms. "Let's go, mi amor. We are leaving this cursed place."
