The contract with the richest man in town

My arrival at the Valenzuela family mansion was no coincidence. I was broke, with debts that were suffocating me and a resume that no one looked at. That’s why, when Mr. Arturo, the most important businessman in the region, offered me the position of personal assistant and housekeeper, I felt like I had won the lottery.

—There is only one condition, Mariana —he told me that day in his office, surrounded by fine wooden shelves and expensive paintings—. My privacy is sacred. I don’t want you to ask about noise, I don’t want you to go upstairs without permission and, under no circumstances, go near the basement.

He looked like an impeccable gentleman. Always in a suit, always with a measured smile. The salary he offered me was so high that I could pay all my debts in less than a year. The mansion was a dream of marble and glass, a monument to luxury that contrasted with my small suitcase of used clothes.

At first, everything was perfect. Arturo was polite, almost paternal. He gave me punctuality bonuses and allowed me to eat the same gourmet food as him. But the atmosphere in the house was heavy, as if the air was charged with electricity before a storm.

The first night I heard the noises, I thought they were old pipes. But not. It was three o’clock in the morning when the sound of creaking wood woke me up. Someone was walking down the main hallway. The steps were heavy, dragged, like someone who is not in a hurry because he knows that he is the owner of everything.

I looked out the crack in the door and saw him. Arthur carried a bunch of golden keys in his hand. His face was not the same as the one he showed to the town’s businessmen; He had an expression of pure hatred, a grimace of disgust that made my blood run cold. I saw him go down to the basement and close the door with a thud that echoed in my bones.

Shortly after, the smell started. It was a stench that cannot be described in words. It was the aroma of decomposition mixed with humidity and oblivion. It filtered through the vents and settled in my room. I hugged my pillow, crying silently, wondering what kind of sacrifice I was making for that money.

—Is something wrong, Mariana? I see you pale —Arturo asked me the next morning, while having a coffee that cost more than my monthly rent.

—No, Mr. Arturo. Alone… the cold of the night —I lied, looking down.

He watched me for a few seconds that seemed eternal. His gaze was cold, analytical, like that of a predator deciding if its prey is worth it. I knew I suspected something, but I also knew that my need for money was stronger than my curiosity. Or at least that’s what he thought.

For five years, I was a silent accomplice to whatever happened in that darkness. I saw how Arturo grew his empire, how he bought companies and land, always under the shadow of the family tragedy that had left him as the only heir: the supposed death of his mother, the original owner of the entire fortune, in that terrible car accident. ten years ago.

But yesterday, fate decided it was time for the masks to fall. A mistake, a simple oversight in the perfect routine of a powerful man, changed my life forever.

The discovery that changed the history of inheritance

The emergency was sudden. A lawyer from the firm called the mansion shouting that there was a legal problem with some land and that Arturo should appear immediately in court. For the first time in the years I had been working there, I saw him lose his temper. He ran out of the house, got into his luxury car and disappeared down the pine road.

That’s when I saw him. The light in the hallway leading down to the basement was on. And the scariest thing: the heavy dark wooden door was ajar.

My legs were shaking so much that I felt like I was going to collapse. “Go to your room”, my mind told me. “Take the money and forget this”, fear whispered to me. But my feet began to move into the darkness. The rancid smell, that smell of old flesh and confinement, grew denser with each step he descended the cold stone steps.

When I reached the end of the underground hallway, the scene broke my soul. There were no treasures, no jewelry, no secret company file. There was a cage. A rusty iron structure that ran from floor to ceiling, closed with three solid padlocks.

Inside, on a mattress that no longer had color, was she. It was a specter. A woman so thin it looked like the air would break her, with tangled white hair full of dirt. She was wearing the same silk dress she appeared in in the main painting of the room, but now they were just shreds of filthy fabric.

—Mrs. Elena? —I whispered, feeling my stomach turn.

The old woman looked up. His eyes had no trace of madness, but of a sadness so deep that it made me fall to my knees. She was Arturo’s mother. The woman who had supposedly been cremated a decade ago. The true owner of every coin, every company and the mansion where I slept.

—Help me… —his voice was just a breath, harsh from years of disuse—. The will… he didn’t want to share it…

At that moment I understood the magnitude of Arthur’s evil. He wasn’t just a cruel son; He was a criminal who had kidnapped his own mother so as not to lose control of the family wealth. The car accident was a setup. The death was a legal lie orchestrated by bought lawyers.

I took out my phone with my hands covered in cold sweat and called the emergency room. My words came out broken as I tried to explain that the most famous “dead” woman in town was alive and caged under my feet.

While waiting for the police to arrive, I heard the sound of a car braking hard outside. My heart skipped a beat. Arthur had returned. I heard him enter the house shouting my name, his voice filled with a murderous fury that I had never heard from him.

—Mariana! Where are you?! —He shouted as his footsteps echoed above, approaching the basement door.

I hid behind some old boxes, holding my breath, praying that the patrols would arrive before he came down and found me there. The old woman in the cage looked at me in terror, knowing that if her son entered now, neither of them would leave that basement alive.

The seconds were hours. I heard Arturo go down the first step. I heard him curse quietly as he took something out of his jacket. Just as his shadow cast on the back wall, police sirens began howling at the entrance of the mansion.

The officers entered with brute force. Arturo tried to pretend, he tried to say that I had gone crazy, that I was an intruder. But he couldn’t stop them when they reached the basement. The sound of shears cutting the locks of the cage was the sweetest sound I had ever heard in my life.

But the real nightmare didn’t end when they took her out of there. What the old woman said after being released left the entire police force in a state of absolute shock.

The secret of the Testament and final justice

When paramedics wrapped Mrs. Elena in a thermal blanket and helped her out into daylight, the entire town seemed to have stopped. Arturo was handcuffed against one of his luxury cars, shouting that it was all a medical misunderstanding, that his mother had dementia and that he was just “protecting” her from herself.

A veteran officer, his face pale with horror at what he had just seen in that basement, approached the old woman to take her preliminary statement.

—Mrs. Valenzuela, you are safe now —the officer said in a soft voice—. Your son will go to prison for this. Let’s take her to the hospital.

The old woman, who until then had not stopped shaking, stopped dead. She stared at Arturo, who was watching her with a mixture of hatred and despair. He then looked back at the officer and, with a clarity no one expected from anyone in his state, pointed not only at his son, but also at the mansion.

—He’s not the only one —he said with a firm voice, making the police release their weapons in fright at the forcefulness of his words—. Look under the rose garden. Find my husband and the lawyer who wrote the original will.

The silence that followed was sepulchral. Arturo turned white as paper and stopped screaming. He tried to lunge at his mother, but the officers knocked him to the ground.

The investigation lasted months and was the largest scandal in the country’s history. It turned out that Arturo had not only locked up his mother to keep the fortune. Years ago, when his father discovered that Arturo was stealing funds from family businesses to pay million-dollar gambling debts, the young businessman decided to eliminate any obstacles.

He murdered his father and buried the body on the property. Then, he forced the family lawyer to falsify a will in which he appeared as universal heir, before also getting rid of the lawyer. He couldn’t kill his mother; Some remorse remained with him, or perhaps he was a sadist who enjoyed watching her burn out in the dark while he enjoyed his money.

The mansion, once a symbol of status and luxury, was demolished by court order to recover the remains of the victims. Arturo was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of bail, losing every last cent of the inheritance he coveted so much.

I stayed with Mrs. Elena until her last days. She regained her health, although the aftermath of confinement was never completely erased. Before he passed away, he decided that I should receive a portion of the true inheritance, not as a payment, but as a reward for having had the courage to go down into that darkness when everyone else looked away.

Today, when I pass in front of what was once that luxury mansion, I understand that there is no fortune worth the price of conscience. Arturo’s money vanished between lawyers and trials, but the truth, no matter how deep it is buried, always finds a way to come to light.

Sometimes the most beautiful houses hide the most terrible monsters, and true wealth is not in jewels or millionaire wills, but in the freedom of being able to sleep at night without hearing footsteps in the dark.