The ultimatum came with the smell of expensive incense and defeat.
In the master bedroom of the mansion in Lomas de Chapultepec, the air smelled of antiseptic, but it could not beat the sandalwood that burned in a silver burner. Amira Salgado was standing, back straight, a folder of skin pressed against her chest as if it were a shield. In front of her, her father —Don Hassan Salgado, the man who built towers with his last name and bought wills with a signature— was reduced to a shadow between silk sheets.
The heart monitor set a slow pace, as if time was counting out loud.
—Sign the fusion, Amira... —he said, his voice in ashes—. Before dawn.
—I can fight in court —she responded, cold, exact—. I have lawyers in London, in New York...
He let out a dry sound, more like a bone breaking than a laugh.
—The time of the courts has passed. You need a last name... and a ring. —His surprisingly strong fingers squeezed his wrist—. The government is waiting for my last breath to nationalize everything. They will say “instability”, they will say “there is no male heir”. And what I built... They are going to devour it.
Amira felt the cold of the air conditioning on the back of her neck. It was not a negotiation, it was an execution with a date.
—I am not a liquidating asset.
—You are my heir —her eyes, clouded by illness, met hers with desperate lucidity—. And the heiresses do not have the luxury of romance. They have the duty to survive. The Alsaba family offered their three children. They are the only thing old enough to silence bureaucrats and powerful enough to protect your name. Choose today. Tonight. Or tomorrow you will have no roof, no inheritance, no last name.
Amira swallowed.
