Chapter 4 - The Night in the Peugeot
The rain fell in unrelenting, freezing torrents over the Salamanca district, drumming against the roof of the rented Peugeot 208 like a shower of lead shot.
Inside the cramped, fogged-up cabin, the air smelled of wet wool, cheap baby formula, and absolute despair.
"Turn the heater on, Alejandro! He’s shivering!" Claudia shrieked from the passenger seat, her voice raw from hours of screaming. She was clutching one-year-old Leo, who was wailing with piercing, exhausted hunger, his little hands clawing at her silk blouse.
"I can't turn the heater on!" Alejandro roared back, slamming his palms against the plastic steering wheel. "The tank is on empty! If I idle the engine for another ten minutes, we won't even have enough gas to drive to a hostel!"
"A hostel?!" Claudia’s eyes bulged with horrified fury, her carefully cultivated facade of upper-class elegance completely disintegrating. "I am not sleeping in a hostel! We live in a three-hundred-square-meter penthouse on Calle Velázquez! My clothes are in that closet! My Hermès bags! My jewelry!"
"You saw the concierge, Claudia! He threatened to call the National Police if I stepped onto the marble again!" Alejandro’s voice cracked, a high, panicked sound that bordered on hysteria. "He had a legal injunction signed by Don Mateo himself! They changed the digital keypads! Our codes don't work!"
"Then call your bank! Call your partners in Switzerland!"
"There are no partners in Switzerland!" Alejandro screamed, tears of pure humiliation finally spilling over his lashes, burning his stubbled cheeks. "Don't you understand what happened today?! The Swiss fund... the consulting fees... the corporate bonuses... it was all her! It was always her!"
The silence that followed was suffocating, punctuated only by the baby's choking sobs.
Claudia stared at him through the gloom of the fogged windows, her mouth hanging open in grotesque disbelief. "What... what did you say?"
"I don't have eighty thousand euros," Alejandro whispered, his head sinking down until his forehead touched the cold plastic of the steering wheel. "I never had eighty thousand euros. My salary at the firm was forty-two thousand a year. The rest—the half-million-euro transfers, the black cards, the seasonal villas in Marbella, the lease on the Porsche—it came from a private account called Inversiones Suizas-Iberia. I thought... God help me, I thought an international logistics syndicate was paying me for my market expertise..."
"You idiot," Claudia breathed, the words dripping with venom so concentrated it made Alejandro flinch. "You arrogant, incompetent idiot. You told me you were a multi-millionaire! You told me you ran the commercial network!"
"I believed I did!" he wept. "Why would a woman let her husband believe he was the breadwinner if she was funding everything?!"
"Because she owned you, Alejandro!" Claudia lunged across the center console, her manicured nails digging into his wool lapel, shaking him violently. "She bought you like a pet dog! And you brought me into this! You told me to leave my apartment in Chamberí because we were moving into the master suite today! I gave up my lease! I sold my furniture! All my things are in storage lockers that are billed to your canceled credit card!"
The realization of their true situation hit them with the physical weight of an avalanche.
They had no home. They had no liquid capital. They had no vehicles. And the family business in Toledo that had sustained three generations of Alejandro's ancestors was currently surrounded by yellow police tape and commercial bailiffs.
Alejandro’s phone, plugged into the dashboard charger, lit up.
A single WhatsApp message appeared on the screen from an unsaved corporate number.
«The President of the Vega Holding Corporation will grant you an audience tomorrow at 9:00 AM. Torre de Cristal, 45th Floor. Do not be late. Dress appropriately.»
Alejandro stared at the glowing text, his breath hitching. "The President... the Vega Trust..."
"Is she dead?" Claudia whispered, a sickening spark of predatory hope suddenly igniting in her eyes. "Alejandro... the operation was seven hours long. What if she died on the table? What if this is her executor calling you in to read the will?!"
Alejandro lifted his head, his frantic, sleep-deprived mind seizing upon the fantasy like a drowning man clutching a razor blade. "The will... of course. We were married for fifteen years. Even with the divorce papers, the probate court cannot disinherit a surviving spouse overnight without an evidentiary trial. The Spanish Civil Code guarantees the legitimate share to the widower!"
He wiped the snot and tears from his face with his silk pocket square, a grotesque, manic confidence flooding back into his veins.
"She’s dead," Alejandro whispered, his eyes wide and feverish in the dashboard light. "She must be dead. That's why the accounts were frozen—it was an automatic probate lockdown upon the death of the primary grantor! The lawyers had to freeze everything to inventory the estate!"
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Claudia let out a breathless, triumphant gasp, smoothing back her disheveled blonde hair and kissing the crying baby's forehead. "I knew it. I knew God wouldn't abandon us. Tomorrow morning, you walk into that tower and you demand what is rightfully ours."
They sat in the freezing, dark Peugeot, shivering through the autumn night, sustained by a delusion so grand it blinded them to the slaughter waiting on the forty-fifth floor.
