Through an intermediary, he offered Eduardo 2 million pesos in exchange for declaring that the garden did not produce profits and that Mercedes suffered from memory problems.
Eduardo, indebted for a failed business, agreed to meet with him.
However, when Patrick began to explain how they should present Mercedes as a confused old woman, Eduardo hid his cell phone under the table and recorded the entire conversation.
I had thought to take the money.
But hearing Patrick mock his mother changed something inside him.
“Old women like her cling to anything because they no longer have a future,” Patrick said. You help us to legally incapacitate it and then you stay with your side.
Eduardo got up.
My mother has more future than you, dude.
The next day he took the recording to Clara’s office.
Mercedes received it without hugging him.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he said. I came for money and I almost ended up selling you. But I couldn’t do it.
She heard the full audio. When he was done, he had tears in his eyes.
Your father would be disappointed.
I know.
“And so am I.
Eduardo lowered his head.
I know.
Mercedes put the phone in the folder.
“Then show me that you still remember who you are.
The trial began months later in Morelia.
The room was filled with farmers, students, journalists and neighbors who had also been pressured to sell their land.
The defense claimed that it was all due to a cartographic error by contractor Abel Neri.
Patrick swore he had never ordered to enter the ranch.
Clara waited until her statement was over.
He then called Abel on the stand.
The contractor appeared pale. Lomas Doradas had stopped paying him and pretended to hold him accountable for everything.
“Mr. Neri, did you confuse the boundaries?” Clara asked.
“No.
A murmur went through the room.
Who ordered you to continue?
Abel pointed to Patrick.
“He. I warned him that the pillars were somewhere else. He told me to knock everything down and that the lawyers would take care of the widow.
The defense protested, but Clara presented the messages, radio records and an extra deposit made to Abel on the same day of the destruction.
He then played the recording delivered by Eduardo.
Patrick’s voice was heard clearly throughout the room:
Help us declare that she is crazy. When you incapacitate it, we can buy the land from you.
Mercedes didn’t take his eyes away from him.
Patrick lowered his head for the first time.
But the most serious turn was still missing.
Clara called to declare a former City Council employee.
The man confessed that Patrick had paid for the agricultural protection map to disappear from the fractionation file.
He also filed emails in which the procurement director calculated that destroying the garden would be cheaper than modifying the pipelines.
There was no longer talk of negligence.
It was a plan.
In issuing the sentence, the judge held Grupo Lomas Doradas responsible for invasion, willful destruction, documentary fraud and aggravated property damage.
The company was sentenced to pay 288 million pesos, cover legal expenses, restore the land and definitively stop phase 3 of the fractionation.
Patricio and 2 municipal officials were also ordered to investigate criminally.
In less than 30 days, investors withdrew their money. The banks froze loans and the works were abandoned.
Patrick was fired and then sued by his own company.
Mercedes earned a fortune, but did not buy a house facing the sea.
When Grupo Lomas Doradas went bankrupt, it acquired at auction the 300 hectares surrounding its ranch.
With the help of the university, he founded the Ignacio Alvarado Trust for the Conservation of Creole Apples.
The specialists managed to save living tissue from 7 roots of the Red Alvarado that Mercedes had protected in its greenhouse.
They didn’t get everything back.
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