Part 2: Then he hung up.
I stood still in the middle of my living room, staring out at the ocean beyond my Puerto Vallarta windows. The silence felt heavy, absolute. Most mothers would have cried. Some would have screamed.
I laughed.
I laughed so hard I had to sit down.
Because my brilliant lawyer son had just made the biggest mistake of his life.
To understand why I reacted that way, you need to know who I am. My name is Teresa Villaseñor. I’m sixty-four years old, and every peso I own came from years of sacrifice. My late husband Ernesto and I started with a small bakery in Jalisco. We worked nonstop—no vacations, no breaks—until that bakery grew into a chain of stores. After he passed away, I sold everything, invested wisely, and chose a quieter life.
