Her pulse stumbled.
“I’m not qualified.”
He tilted his head.
“You seemed qualified this afternoon.”
“That was a boutique.”
“And tomorrow could decide a merger worth more money than either of us can imagine. Life rarely announces the moment before it changes. Be ready in five minutes.”
Then he left.
Lucía stood frozen in the doorway long after his footsteps faded.
Five minutes later she entered the private dining room wearing the plainest dress she owned, borrowed heels from housekeeping, and fear hidden beneath a calm she did not feel.
The room was lined with mirrors and warm lamps.
Crystal glowed.
Silver gleamed.
At the far end sat three French investors, one legal advisor, and a woman in her sixties whose stillness seemed to command the whole table.
Héctor introduced her as Madame Fournier.
Her handshake with Lucía was brief but searching.
Dinner began with measured pleasantries, then numbers, then maps projected onto a screen, then land parcels in northern Mexico marked for development.
Lucía translated carefully.
Every word mattered.
Infrastructure.
Labor strategy.
Tax exposure.
Acquisition schedule.
Then the project name appeared on the screen, and all the air seemed to leave Lucía’s body at once.
San Esteban Corridor.
Her village.
Not the village where she lived now.
The one where she was born.
The one her mother had left years earlier after the school closed and the wells started drying under private extraction.
Lucía kept her face still.
Her fingers gripped the folder on her lap so tightly the paper bent.
Héctor continued speaking in polished corporate Spanish, outlining efficiency, land availability, and minimal local resistance.
Minimal local resistance.
Lucía saw her mother again, coughing in the dark kitchen.
Saw the cracked school walls.
Saw men arriving with maps and promises.
Saw neighbors leaving one by one because staying had become another form of hunger.
Madame Fournier asked a question in French about title disputes and active community claims.
Lucía translated it.
Héctor answered without hesitation.
“No outstanding community challenge with legal force.”
It was smooth.
Convincing.
Probably documented.
Maybe even technically true.
But not true in the way truth lives inside people.
Madame Fournier asked another question, this time more precise, about ancestral use rights and whether any families had been pressured into early sales through intermediaries.
Héctor’s jaw tightened.
He began answering in Spanish, choosing his words more slowly.
