PART 2
Lucía’s new life began in a cold room in Iztapalapa, with damp walls and a borrowed mattress on the floor.
Her friend Marisol had found her a tiny space behind a laundromat. It was not suitable for a sick woman, but it was all they could manage with the money Javier had thrown at them as charity.
Doña Mercedes woke up with her eyes sharper than ever.
Lucía came over with a bowl of oatmeal.
— Good morning, Mrs. Meche. I’ll clean you up now and then give you your medication.
The woman struck the mattress three times with her left hand.
— Are you in pain?
Doña Mercedes shook her head impatiently. Then she pointed toward the bag of documents Lucía had grabbed hurriedly from the apartment: prescriptions, identification cards, medical records, and old papers.
Lucía crouched beside her.
— Are you looking for your ID?
Doña Mercedes rummaged clumsily until she found a yellowed copy. It was the power of attorney through which Javier managed his mother’s accounts and businesses.
She placed her finger on the date.
Lucía read it quietly.
— Valid until March 18th… — She looked at her phone. — Today is the 18th.
Doña Mercedes reached for a pen. With uneven, slow, but legible letters, she wrote:
“Revoke. Today.”
Lucía felt a chill move through her.
— You want to take Javier’s power of attorney away?
The woman nodded.
— But if we do that, he loses access to the accounts, the company, everything.
Doña Mercedes wrote again:
“Let him lose.”
Lucía understood that this was not blind revenge. It was dignity. This was a mother who had heard her own son call her a burden — the rightful owner of an estate her late husband had built, now being drained by the only man she had ever fully trusted.
Finding a notary willing to make a house visit was a nightmare. Several hung up as soon as they heard the woman could not speak.
— Without verbal expression, I won’t take the risk.
“She can write,” Lucía insisted.
— That’s not sufficient.
At noon, a notary named Patricia Salcedo agreed to come.
— If the lady understands and expresses her wishes clearly in writing, I will attest to them. But if I sense any pressure, I will leave immediately.
— I don’t have enough to pay you in full right now, — Lucía admitted.
“We’ll figure that out afterward,” the notary replied. “First let’s see if there’s justice to be done.”
Meanwhile, Javier woke up in the apartment with a hangover and Brenda asleep beside him. He made himself coffee, feeling like the house belonged to him entirely. He had an urgent transfer to authorize to a supplier in Monterrey and another to cover Brenda’s spa day — because, according to her, the previous night’s incident had traumatized her.
He logged into the corporate banking system and tried to authorize five million pesos.
Error.
“Authorization expired. Validation required from the account holder.”
Javier called the bank in a fury.
— What kind of nonsense is this?
— Mr. Ruiz, your authorization expires today. We need either a signed renewal from Mrs. Mercedes or her physical presence.
— My mother is ill.
— Then we can arrange for a notary to visit your home.
Javier hung up. Sweat began moving down his back.
His mother was no longer there.
He called Lucía. Blocked.
He called Marisol. She answered only to say:
— I have no idea where they are, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you, you wretch.
Javier drove frantically, following every lead he had. He remembered the private ambulance. After several calls and a bribe to a talkative employee, he got the address.
At 1:30, Patricia Salcedo arrived at the room in Iztapalapa. She sat across from Doña Mercedes and asked straightforward questions.
— Do you know who I am?
Doña Mercedes wrote:
“Notary.”
— Do you understand what you wish to do?
“Revoke Javier’s power of attorney. Grant power of attorney to Lucía.”
Lucía froze.
— No, Mrs. Meche, I don’t know how to run a company.
The woman wrote:
“I think. You sign. He steals.”
The notary raised her eyebrows.
— The will is clear. Let’s proceed.
She opened her laptop and began filling out documents. Doña Mercedes signed with a trembling but unmistakably her own line.
Just as Patricia was about to upload the revocation to the notarial registry, someone began pounding on the door.
— Lucía, open up! I know you’re in there!
Javier.
The blows shook the wooden frame.
— Mom! Don’t sign anything! They’re manipulating you!
Doña Mercedes set down the pen. For the first time, something like fear crossed her face.
The notary spoke without raising her voice.
— Mrs. Mercedes, look at me. You have already decided. All that remains is to register it.
She typed quickly.
The door cracked.
Lucía shoved a table against the entrance.
“I’m going to break it down!” Javier roared.
Patricia pressed a key.
— Done. Revocation registered at 13:58.
The door gave way with a crash.
Javier burst in, red with anger, disheveled, completely out of control.
— What did you do?
“Your power of attorney has been revoked,” the notary said calmly. “Stay away from my client.”
Javier moved toward the bed.
— Mom, sign again. Right now. You don’t understand what you’ve done. You’re going to ruin me.
Doña Mercedes looked at him the way one looks at a stranger. Then she took the notebook and wrote a single word.
Lucía read it aloud:
— “Thief.”
Javier raised his hand toward Lucía, but a neighbor drawn by the shouting stepped between them and stopped him. The notary was already calling the police.
That afternoon, Javier arrived at the bank and had the nightmare confirmed: Lucía was now the legal representative of Doña Mercedes.
Brenda was gone before nightfall.
“I didn’t sign up for this kind of trouble,” she told him, filling a suitcase with things she had bought with her own money. “When you sort out your finances, you know where to find me.”
Javier was left alone in the apartment. Drunk and humiliated, he began to think of a way to reclaim everything.
Then he remembered the safe hidden behind his mother’s wardrobe, where the family jewelry was kept.
He smiled.
If he could not win honestly, he would win by destroying Lucía.
What no one knew was that Doña Mercedes had been recording everything for months with a hidden camera in her own room.
