After the divorce, my ex-mother-in-law stood outsi…

The contractor defaulted. Insurance disputes dragged into 2021. Three commercial tenants had broken leases, and the Cortez Group’s lawyer, a man named Gerardo who had been with the family for decades and whose primary qualification appeared to be loyalty, had failed to enforce the penalty clauses.

In March of 2021, I pulled their quarterly filing and found they were four months from a bank review that would trigger default on their primary line of credit. Rodrigo did not know I had seen it. He also did not know that three years earlier, I had incorporated a holding company called VL Capital through a law firm in Monterrey.

VL Capital’s managing director was a woman named Carmen Solis, a corporate attorney with eighteen years of experience and a preference for anonymity on behalf of her clients. Carmen called me the night I found the quarterly filing. “You want to move forward?” she asked.