“And if I want to be a sentimental fool?”
Rodrigo’s voice drops.
“Then everything we built collapses.”
Everything we built.
Not everything you built.
There is always a moment when thieves forget grammar.
You stand slowly.
“I want the papers by Friday.”
He stands too.
“That’s impossible.”
“No. It is inconvenient.”
You hear Rebeca’s breath catch near the door.
She has been listening outside.
Of course she has.
You call toward the hallway.
“Come in, Rebeca.”
She enters without pretending surprise.
Her voice is cold now.
“You are being manipulated.”
“Yes,” you say. “But not by the child.”
Neither of them speaks.
You press the button on the recorder and turn it off in your pocket.
Then you say the sentence that makes both of them forget how to breathe.
“I am calling an independent audit.”
Rebeca moves first.
“Esteban, no.”
Too fast.
Too afraid.
Rodrigo says, “That would damage confidence.”
You nod.
“In what?”
No answer.
Again, no answer.
You pick up the phone on your desk and call the only number you still remember by heart.
A number you have not called in seven years.
“Salvador,” you say when the old lawyer answers.
His voice cracks.
“Esteban?”
“I need you.”
He is silent for one second.
Then says, “Finally.”
By noon, the house is at war.
Quiet war.
Rich people war.
Doors closing softly, phones buzzing, staff disappearing into corners, Rebeca issuing instructions in a voice too calm to be clean.
Salvador arrives at 2:00 p.m.
He is seventy-eight, half-deaf in one ear, and the only lawyer your father ever trusted. Rebeca hates him because he cannot be charmed. Rodrigo hates him because he asks for originals.
He enters your study without greeting your sister.
“Esteban,” he says.
You stand.
He takes both your hands.
For a second, you are no longer the blind billionaire in a mausoleum.
You are a man whose old friend has found him in a locked room.
“You took long enough,” Salvador mutters.
You almost smile.
“So did you.”
“I was told you wanted no visitors.”
Your fingers tighten around his.
“I was told many things too.”
He understands immediately.
Good lawyers know when pain is evidence.
You give him the recorder.
You tell him about Abril.
You tell him what you overheard.
You tell him Rodrigo’s words.
Everything we built collapses.
Salvador listens without interrupting.
Then he asks, “Where is the girl now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find her.”
“I intend to.”
