Chapter 3 - Forty-Three Messages
I listened to the recording three times.
Each time, Isabella’s scream ended at exactly the same second.
Each time, Beatriz insisted the recording proved nothing.
Mateo arrived with two security officers before I answered her.
Our attorney, Elena Vargas, came ten minutes later.
Elena had represented me through acquisitions, lawsuits, and one attempted hostile takeover.
I had never seen her look at me the way she did after listening to Isabella’s message.
“Gabriel, nobody touches that phone again.”
Beatriz scoffed.
“This is absurd.”
Elena turned toward her.
“Then you should have no objection to preserving the evidence.”
“I object to being treated like a suspect.”
“You are not my client.”
The words landed hard.
Beatriz stared at me.
“You called your lawyer against your own wife?”
“I called a lawyer for my daughter.”
Mateo’s IT specialist copied the phone.
Forty-three recordings.
Some were only seconds long.
Others lasted minutes.
In one, Isabella whispered that she had been locked in the pantry for spilling milk.
In another, she said Beatriz had taken away dinner because a bathroom mirror had streaks.
In another, Isabella cried because she had missed a school field trip after Beatriz refused to sign the permission form.
Then we reached message twenty-seven.
Isabella was hiding somewhere.
Her breathing was shallow.
A man’s voice came through the wall.
I recognized it immediately.
Javier Montes.
My chief financial officer.
My closest friend for seventeen years.
Beatriz said his name.
Then Javier laughed.
“Gabriel still thinks Dubai is the biggest deal of his life.”
Beatriz answered.
“By the time he comes home, it won’t matter what he thinks.”
My entire body went still.
Elena looked at me.
“Play the rest.”
The recording continued.
Javier asked whether Isabella had seen the documents.
Beatriz said she did not think so.
Then she added that children were easy to frighten.
I stopped the recording.
Mateo cursed under his breath.
Beatriz rushed toward the door.
One of the security officers blocked her.
“You cannot hold me here.”
Elena replied calmly.
“No one is holding you.”
“Then move.”
The officer stepped aside.
Beatriz did not leave.
That told me she wanted something inside the villa.
I looked at Mateo.
“Lock down the study.”
Beatriz’s eyes flashed.
Too late.
Mateo saw it too.
We reached my study first.
The safe behind the painting was open.
Three folders were missing.
So was the encrypted backup drive I kept in the lower compartment.
I turned to Beatriz.
“What did you take?”
“Nothing.”
“Javier has the files?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My phone rang.
It was the Dubai project director.
I answered.
“Mr. Serrano, we have a problem.”
“How bad?”
“There are two sets of invoices in the Marbella system.”
I looked at Elena.
“How much?”
“At least eleven million euros.”
Beatriz closed her eyes.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
“Send everything to Elena.”
The project director lowered his voice.
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“Some approvals carry your digital signature.”
“I didn’t sign them.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because three were executed while you were in the air between Madrid and Dubai.”
The room went silent.
Someone had not merely stolen from my company.
Someone had built evidence to make it look as though I had done it.
I looked at Beatriz.
She smiled.
Not warmly.
Not nervously.
It was the smile of someone who had been waiting for me to understand.
“You should have stayed in Dubai,” she said.
Then every alarm in the villa began screaming.
Mateo looked at his phone.
“Fire alert.”
“Where?”
He stared at the screen.
“The records room.”
We ran.
Smoke rolled beneath the door at the end of the service corridor.
The room containing seven years of household and corporate paper archives was burning.
Mateo grabbed an extinguisher.
The fire investigator later confirmed that an accelerant had been poured across the records-room floor.
The blaze had been deliberate.
Someone had known exactly which room contained the oldest paper files.
That narrowed the suspects to people who understood both my house and my company.
Javier understood the company.
Beatriz understood the house.
Together, they had almost erased the bridge between them.
I reached for the handle.
Elena shouted for me to stop.
Then Isabella screamed from upstairs.
“Dad!”
I turned.
She stood at the railing, pointing toward the front gates.
A black SUV was racing away.
May you like
And in the passenger seat sat Javier Montes.
