Chapter 1 - Neon and Ignorance in San Pedro
The music inside Onyx, the most exclusive private club in San Pedro Garza García, vibrated with a bass so heavy it seemed to rattle the teeth in Mateo’s head. The VIP section was bathed in a haze of amber neon lights, expensive cigar smoke, and the sharp, botanical tang of high-end mezcal. Empty crystal bottles of Don Julio 1942 crowded the black glass table like monuments to excess.
Mateo slumped back against the custom leather upholstery, his arm draped heavily around Valeria. She was his mistress of two years—a twenty-four-year-old fashion influencer with bleach-blonde hair, designer stilettos, and an insatiable appetite for his credit cards. She laughed loudly, tossing her head back, her fingers tracing the collar of his silk shirt.
“Mateo, seriously, turn that vibrating thing off,” Valeria pouted, tapping the sleek screen of his iPhone resting on the table. “It’s been buzzing every two minutes for the last hour. If it’s your business associates, tell them to wait until Monday. Tonight is our night.”
Mateo didn't look at the screen. He already knew who it was.
Wife.
The caller ID had flashed across the glass display ten times in the span of thirty minutes. Each flash was an irritation, a minor buzz interrupting his enjoyment of the expensive liquor and the adoring attention of his mistress.
“Leave her,” Mateo slurred, a lazy, arrogant smirk playing on his lips as he poured another shot. “She’s just being dramatic.”
His friend Rodrigo, sitting across the table, laughed and shook his head. “Still calling? Man, you need to put that woman on a tighter leash. Women get completely unbearable when they’re pregnant. Always needing things, always complaining about swelling, backaches, and midnight cravings.”
“Exactly,” Valeria chimed in, leaning her head against Mateo’s shoulder. “She knew what she signed up for when she married a successful developer. You’re building towers, Mateo. You don't have time to babysit.”
Mateo felt a surge of inflated pride. He was thirty-five, a rising partner in a major northern real estate firm, and the owner of a sprawling, newly constructed modernist mansion in Monterrey’s most exclusive gated community. He lived in a world where money bought compliance, and compliance was the only currency he valued.
He picked up the phone. The screen lit up yet again with Camila’s name.
Instead of answering, Mateo swiped his thumb across the screen, toggled the switch straight to airplane mode, and tossed the device carelessly onto the cushions behind him as if it were a piece of trash.
May you like
“There,” Mateo said, pulling Valeria closer by the waist and lifting his glass high into the air. “Problem solved! To my last weekend of freedom before becoming a father!”
“Cheers!” his friends chorused, glass clinking against glass, drowning out the faint, ghostly vibration of a seventeenth call that never managed to get through.
