Chapter 20 - The Voice from the Alpine Vault
Three days later.
The Mexican press had experienced an earthquake. Front-page headlines from *El Universal* to *The Wall Street Journal* blared the news: *FALLEN PLAYBOY RICARDO DE LA VEGA CONVICTED ON FEDERAL CHARGES OF ATTEMPTED MURDER AND CORPORATE TREASON.* Teresa De La Vega had been committed to a state-run psychiatric facility in Guadalajara following a total nervous breakdown on national television.
The slate was wiped clean. The De La Vega dynasty was completely, irrevocably obliterated from existence.
I stood on the helipad of Vance Logistics Tower at dusk, the cold mountain wind whipping my cashmere trench coat as the twin turbines of my private Sikorsky helicopter spun down into a quiet hum.
Sofia waited near the pressurized elevator doors, holding a secure satellite phone that was blinking with an urgent, encrypted blue light.
"Victoria," Sofia said, her voice tight, devoid of its usual professional lightness.
"If that’s another interview request from Bloomberg, decline it," I said, peeling off my leather gloves. "I have no interest in narrating a dead man’s funeral."
"It isn't Bloomberg," Sofia said, stepping into the downdraft of the rotors. "It’s from the private fiduciary desk at *Banque Cantonale de Genève* in Switzerland. The one that oversees your late father’s foundational trust."
I stopped. My boots froze against the painted yellow circle of the helipad.
My father, Don Alberto Vance, had died eight years ago in a private plane crash over the Andes. His entire industrial empire had passed to me, verified by three international courts and sealed under the highest tier of banking secrecy.
"What about the foundational trust?" I asked, my voice suddenly sharp.
"The Swiss bank received a biometric authorization code forty minutes ago," Sofia whispered, holding out the satellite phone with trembling hands. "Someone just unlocked the sovereign vault in Zurich—the vault that only your father's personal retinal scan could open."
The blood in my veins turned to liquid nitrogen.
"That's impossible," I said. "My father died in 2016."
"The caller didn't speak to the fiduciary officer," Sofia continued, her eyes wide with terror. "The caller left a direct, encrypted audio transmission for you. Routed through an untraceable satellite uplink in the Austrian Alps."
I snatched the phone from her hand.
I pressed the flashing blue button and brought the receiver to my ear.
Static crackled across the secure line—a deep, rhythmic hiss that sounded like wind howling through high-altitude pine trees.
Then, a voice broke through the silence.
It wasn't Ricardo’s broken whine. It wasn't Camilla’s sharp British accent. It was a deep, gravelly baritone—a voice that had commanded my childhood, a voice that had taught me how to read balance sheets, a voice that had been buried beneath six feet of stone in the family crypt eight years ago.
"You handled the boy well, Victoria," the voice whispered, low, steady, and chillingly alive. "You proved you have the stomach to rule the empire. But Ricardo was only the first test. Now... let's see if you have the stomach to face the man who built it."
A sharp, metallic click echoed over the line, followed by dead silence.
The phone screen went black.
I stood alone on the roof of the world, suspended between the glittering lights of Monterrey and the pitch-black void of the mountains, as the cold realization struck me like a physical blow:
May you like
The war hadn't ended.
It had only just begun.
