Chapter 4 - The Price of Blood
The days that followed were a descent into the dark heart of my own family’s legacy. Carmen became an unwilling teacher, or perhaps a jailer of the mind. She showed me the ledgers, the real ones, hidden in plain sight within the city’s infrastructure. The money I had made through hostile takeovers, the environmental damage caused by my factories, the families displaced by my developments—it was all fueling the very entropy Carmen was trying to contain.
"Every dollar you possess is a tether," she explained, pacing around the room as the candles hummed. "The city thrives because you hoard, but it decays because you don't share the weight. Diego is the anchor for all that misery. As long as he is a Mendoza, he is the vessel for the debt."
I made a choice. I didn't consult my board of directors. I didn't wait for my lawyers to advise me. I began to liquidate. I started with the luxury holdings, the private jets, the yachts—everything was sold, the funds diverted to a blind trust that Carmen and I managed together. We started rebuilding the city from the ground up, focusing on the neglected neighborhoods, the forgotten communities, the places that had been drained to feed the Mendoza beast.
It was an act of financial suicide. The corporate sharks—the very people I had taught how to be ruthless—began to circle. They saw a man abandoning his empire and assumed weakness. They saw a billionaire becoming a philanthropist and assumed a tax dodge. They didn't understand that I was trying to save my son’s life by draining my family’s corrupt blood from the city’s veins.
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"They're coming for you," Carmen warned one evening, her eyes fixed on the flickering candles. "The ones who want the debt to remain. They aren't interested in your money; they want the sacrifice to go through. They need the city to remain in chaos so they can keep picking at the bones."
I knew she was right. My former partners had hired private security, intelligence consultants, and even hit squads to intercept the liquidation process. They were preparing for an all-out war. I stood in my office, watching the city lights below, and for the first time, I didn't see assets. I saw people. I saw a future I could actually live in. I had spent my life as a shark in a tank, and now, finally, I was jumping into the ocean. I was terrified, but for the first time, I felt clean.
