Chương 11
Competitor pricing.
Insufficient regional redundancy.
Minor concerns about our balance sheet.
Nothing unusual for a company our size.
Alejandro stared at the message.
“My father knew people in Toluca.”
I looked at him.
“What people?”
“Construction people.”
“That is extremely vague.”
“I was not involved in his business.”
“You just said he knew people.”
“Because he built industrial sites.”
“For whom?”
“I don’t know all of them.”
Elena cut in.
“Do not start excavating family history at one in the morning by guessing.”
Neither of us answered.
“That is how people manufacture certainty,” she said.
“Save the message.”
“I already did,” I said.
“And stop replying.”
Alejandro set his phone facedown.
“What if she’s actually trying to tell us something?”
“She can tell your lawyer tomorrow,” Elena said.
“I don’t have one.”
“You may need one.”
He looked at me.
The words landed harder than I expected.
Elena continued in the same calm voice.
“Not because I’m accusing you of anything.”
“Understood.”
“But Mariana and you now have potentially conflicting interests.”
Alejandro gave a short nod even though she could not see him.
“I understand.”
“I mean legally.”
“I understood the first time.”
His irritation sounded almost healthy.
Elena ignored it.
“I’m going back to sleep unless somebody commits an actual crime.”
“That seems fair,” I said.
“It usually does at this hour.”
She hung up.
For a while, Alejandro and I stood in the study listening to the silence.
Then he said, “You should look at the old bid records.”
“I was going to.”
“Do you still have them?”
“Probably archived.”
“I can help.”
“No.”
He flinched.
“I know.”
It was becoming a terrible refrain between us.
I opened the company document archive through my laptop.
My access still worked.
His might not by morning.
The thought entered without permission.
I pushed it away.
Searching the old Toluca folder took longer than expected because the project had been stored under a client code I had forgotten.
When I found it, the files looked almost quaint.
Old branding.
Old templates.
My own email signature with a phone number I had not used in years.
Alejandro stood behind me without touching the desk.
The final bid package contained pricing models, route maps, staffing projections, letters of reference, and a rejection notice.
Nothing unusual.
I opened the internal postmortem.
My own comments filled the margins.
Too much deadhead mileage.
Should have secured second yard before bid.
Competitor undercut line-haul rate.
I had written those notes in green.
I used to mark all strategic comments in green because someone once told me red made people defensive.
That had lasted six months.
“What are we looking for?” Alejandro asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That feels familiar.”
I ignored him.
The competitor that won was Transportes del Valle Central.
The name tugged at something.
Not memory exactly.
Recognition.
I searched our vendor system.
No current record.
Then I searched old legal correspondence.
One result appeared.
A cease-and-desist letter from seven years ago involving driver recruitment.
I opened it.
Transportes del Valle Central had accused Ruta Norte of approaching two of their drivers after the Toluca loss.
Nothing remarkable.
But copied on the email chain was a lawyer named Héctor Zamudio.
Alejandro leaned closer.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“I know that name.”
“How?”
“My father used him.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
He gave me a tired look.
“My father did not give me quarterly briefings on his legal problems.”
“Fair.”
I searched Héctor Zamudio.
Old correspondence.
Supplier disputes.
Employment settlement.
Then a PDF appeared in the personal archive I had migrated from an ancient hard drive years earlier.
The file name was meaningless.
IMG_00481_scan.
I almost skipped it.
Then I saw the date.
Three days after we lost the Toluca bid.
I opened it.
It was a scanned handwritten note on cream-colored stationery.
Not addressed to me.
Addressed to my former business partner, Isabel Romero.
Isabel had left Ruta Norte after our first major funding round.
We had not ended badly.
We had simply wanted different things and were both too proud to admit it until the lawyers charged us for the privilege.
The note was from Héctor Zamudio.
I read the first line.
Alejandro read over my shoulder.
Dear Ms. Romero, as discussed, Mr. Salgado has agreed that the matter concerning the Toluca proposal will remain private provided no further contact is made with his office.
I stopped breathing for a second.
“Salgado,” Alejandro said.
I looked up.
“That was your father’s surname.”
“My surname too.”
“You use Ortega.”
“My father was Julián Salgado Ortega.”
I looked back at the note.
“What office?”
“I don’t know.”
The next paragraph was worse.
It referenced “materials inadvertently obtained during preliminary coordination.”
No detail.
No attachment.
No explanation.
At the bottom, Isabel had handwritten a single note.
M says destroy this.
I knew the M.
Miguel Santos.
Our first outside counsel.
He had died four years earlier.
I sat back.
Alejandro pulled another chair beside me.
“Did Isabel ever tell you about this?”
“No.”
“Could she have handled something without you?”
“At that stage?”
I thought about it.
“Yes.”
That answer hurt my pride.
But it was true.
Ruta Norte had been smaller then and messier.
There were days Isabel signed documents because I was on the road.
There were days I approved hires from airport gates.
We liked to remember the early years as disciplined because survival had eventually made us disciplined.
The truth was less flattering.
“What does ‘materials inadvertently obtained’ mean?” Alejandro asked.
“It could mean anything.”
“Bid documents.”
“Maybe.”
“Pricing.”
“Maybe.”
“Route model.”
“Maybe.”
He leaned back.
“If my father got hold of your bid information—”
“We do not know that.”
“But if he did.”
I closed the file.
“We still do not know why Teresa mentioned it.”
Alejandro looked at his phone.
“She knows something.”
“Yes.”
“About my father.”
“Yes.”
“About your company.”
“Probably.”
“About Toluca.”
“Yes.”
He gave me a bleak smile.
May you like
“And we’re supposed to sleep.”
“You can try.”
