Chapter 50
Chapter 50
NARRATOR
The morning she decided to make her final move, Valentina did not hesitate for a second. The Sicilian sun streamed through the suite’s windows, illuminating the chaos of the previous night: empty glasses, overflowing ashtrays, papers scattered everywhere. She rose from the bed and contacted the tabloid that paid best for scandals: Cronaca Siciliana, a voracious rag with tentacles in Mexico and Europe.
She spoke with the coldness of someone placing the final piece on a chessboard, dictating every detail without a trace of remorse.
She sold them the photos for an exorbitant price—hundreds of thousands wired to an offshore account—with one non-negotiable condition: they had to be published now, at that precise moment, while the wound of the first rumor was still raw and the Church had already shown its protective face.
The images were devastating: Lucía with the twins at the De Luca mansion, documents of anonymous bank transfers, proof of family protection. The text Valentina dictated was surgical: “Holy Father with secret daughters – The photos that prove the lie. The ‘Saint of Chiapas’ who denied his bastards lives in mafia luxury while his parish burns.”
Social media exploded within minutes. Twitter ablaze with hashtags like #FalseSaint #MateosDaughters. Instagram flooded with reposts. Sensationalist blogs followed like vultures, news programs displayed the images over and over. Voices that once hailed him as a messiah now demanded the truth: “How much more does the cassock hide?”
While Mexico refracted the story like a digital virus—giant screens displaying the photos, radio stations spitting debates, parishioners in shock outside the church—Valentina did what she did best: move the pieces of power with lethal precision.
She had appointments scheduled with men who did not tremble at the mention of blood. Among them, the Russian boss Ivan Petrov, broad and cold as a block of ice, with a cutting smile. He lived between legal businesses—vodka imports—and contracts that ended in violence.
She went to his office on the outskirts of Palermo—a warehouse disguised as an office, armed guards posted outside, sea views beyond—dressed in a fitted black pantsuit.
She knew how to sell hatred like merchandise. She promised detailed maps of De Luca shipping routes, weak points in the supply chain, names of corrupt partners. She offered access to what the Russians wanted: the total collapse of their rival, a vacuum to fill with their own empire.
“If you help me bring Sebastián down,” Valentina said in a low, steady voice, leaning over the table, “when it’s over, I’ll take what remains. We’ll have agreements that turn into cash. You get it all: ports, vineyards, routes without competition.”
The Russian studied her. He gripped her hand firmly and nodded.
“Deal.”
A toast of pure vodka sealed the pact.
That very day, with the press burning and allies pulling invisible strings, the first real fire appeared: a devastating explosion at the De Lucas’ main warehouse, the heart of the family business in the Sicilian hills.
It was no accident. Explosives placed with precision, remote ignition triggered from a disposable phone.
The warehouse—that fortified storage facility where weapons, shipments, and documents worth millions rested—erupted like a wounded beast. Flames rose black and ravenous into the sky, columns of smoke climbing like signals of war. The blast echoed through the hills, rattling windows miles away.
Guards shouting orders, sirens wailing, smoke filling the roads with the stench of burning plastic and gunpowder. The fire devoured everything. The trucks bound for the port—loaded for a multimillion delivery—vanished in the flames.
Millions lost within hours. Routes severed like cut arteries.
Sebastián, in Sicily, found out from a phone that would not stop ringing. Frantic calls from capos, accountants, panicked allies.
He inhaled the cold certainty of total war. This was no accident. Someone had intended to leave them without arsenal, without merchandise, without economic muscle. The hand behind it knew exactly where to strike.
His face hardened. Measured fury—the kind that forces you to become the monster that devours the enemy.
While sirens still wailed in the Sicilian night and news cameras crossed the island broadcasting the disaster live—helicopters hovering over smoking ruins—in Mexico, reports linked Valentina’s photos to the burned warehouse.
“The priest who denied his daughters, photographed in a mafia family mansion; the family suffers a multimillion attack in Sicily—coincidence or revenge?” headlines asked, analysts speculating about “internal vengeance” and “sins that burn.”
The stain of the press hit Mateo like a cold wave. The double blow of public humiliation—parishioners abandoning Mass, bishops calling emergency meetings—and violence against his people.
In the suite where she had met with Damián—now a nest of conspiracy with open laptops, marked-up maps, and champagne bottles—Valentina and he celebrated.
This was not a meeting of conspirators who feared. It was a celebration of two people who enjoyed watching the world crack beneath their hands.
Champagne spilling into crystal glasses, cigarettes trailing smoke into the air. Damián, who had arrived on the island with a rage-sharpened stare, now exhaled with the satisfaction of someone who had paid for tangible results.
Valentina smiled. Her face regained the serenity of her worst version: the one who does not beg, the one who delivers sentences.
“You’re going to lose everything,” she said softly. “Mateo, Sebastián, Sofía… all of them.”
Damián met her gaze, eyes gleaming with the same hunger, lifting his glass.
“To the first strike landed. To the first crack in those bastards’ armor.”
They clinked glasses with a crystalline chime.
“The first blow was precise,” Valentina continued. “A check to the king. But this is only the beginning.”
“What’s the next move?” Damián asked.
“The Russians will hit the shipping routes in three days,” she replied. “Sebastián will lose millions more. And while he’s busy with that, you’ll go after Lucía.”
Damián tensed at the name.
“Where is she?”
“At the main mansion,” Valentina said. “I have the blueprints, the guards’ schedules, everything. But you have to wait for the exact moment. When the family is weakest.”
“And you?” he asked. “What will you do?”
Valentina smiled coldly.
“I’ll take care of my mother. Of Sebastián. Of everyone who humiliated me.”
They looked at each other in silence. Two broken people, united by hatred, celebrating the destruction they had begun.
Outside, firefighters battled helplessly against the flames. In Sicily, losses were counted in the millions. In Mexico, images of a man who had denied his own daughters played on repeat.
And across the global city, the photos multiplied on screens, on phones, on bar tables, while the most dangerous words spread like fire: betrayal, lie, arson.
And at the center, Valentina—the wound turned strategy—smiling as the world burned.