Chapter 6 - Beneath the Floor
At sunrise, Mateo and I entered the study.
Isabella showed us the exact place.
One floorboard near the bookcase had fresh scratches around its edge.
Mateo removed it.
Below was a black metal case.
It required a six-digit code.
I tried my birthday.
Nothing.
Isabella watched from the doorway.
“Try Mom’s.”
I looked at her.
“Your mother?”
“Not Beatriz.”
Lucia.
I entered Lucia’s birthday.
The lock clicked.
Inside were two encrypted drives, a ledger, and a handwritten letter.
The letter was addressed to me.
Gabriel, if you are reading this, someone inside Serrano Group has discovered the trust.
The handwriting was Lucia’s.
My knees weakened.
Lucia had been dead five years.
I sat at my desk and continued reading.
She wrote that she had discovered irregular transfers involving Javier shortly before her death.
She had not confronted him because she lacked proof.
She believed someone had been monitoring her.
She hid copies of financial records and asked her father’s attorney to protect Isabella’s inheritance.
The final paragraph changed everything.
If anything happens to me, do not assume the accident was an accident.
I stopped breathing.
Lucia had died when her car left a mountain road during heavy rain.
Police ruled it accidental.
I had accepted that conclusion because grief had destroyed my ability to question anything.
Now I looked at Mateo.
“Get Carmen.”
The encrypted drives contained old accounting files.
One showed payments from Javier to a mechanic six days before Lucia’s crash.
The mechanic’s business had closed shortly afterward.
Another file contained photographs Lucia had taken of Javier meeting an unknown man.
Mateo recognized him.
“Tomás Vela.”
“Who?”
“Private security contractor.”
I knew the name.
Vela had worked for us briefly.
He had been fired after an assault complaint.
Mateo checked public records.
Vela now lived outside Málaga.
Police went to his address.
The house was empty.
But a neighbor said he had left in a hurry the previous night.
Someone had warned him.
Carmen’s face hardened.
“We have a leak.”
The leak could be in my company.
It could be in the police.
It could be both.
From that moment, Carmen restricted the investigation to four people.
That afternoon, a courier delivered flowers to Isabella.
There was no sender.
Inside the bouquet was a card.
GOOD GIRLS KEEP QUIET.
I stared at the words until my hands shook.
Isabella saw my face.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing important.”
For once, I lied to protect her.
Carmen took the card for fingerprints.
Mateo doubled security.
Beatriz called me that evening.
I almost ignored it.
Then I answered.
“You’re frightening Isabella,” she said.
I laughed once.
The sound surprised even me.
“You sent flowers?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“If anyone comes near her—”
“There.”
Her voice became soft.
“That temper.”
I understood immediately.
She was recording me.
So I changed my tone.
“Thank you for calling, Beatriz.”
Silence.
“I hope your lawyer has explained the evidence recovered from the apartment.”
More silence.
“And I hope he has explained what happens if the laboratory connects those sedatives to my blood sample from Dubai.”
She hung up.
Elena smiled faintly.
“You learn quickly.”
“No.”
I looked at the card.
Forensic technicians traced the hidden microphone to a batch sold to a private security supplier.
The purchaser used cash.
But the store camera captured Tomás Vela.
The image was grainy, yet unmistakable.
For the first time, Lucia's old warning and Isabella's recent terror occupied the same evidence board.
Five years apart, the same people had been circling my family.
“I learned too late.”
That night, the security system detected movement near the eastern wall.
Mateo’s team found footprints.
A section of fence had been cut.
Then one guard discovered a small object beneath Isabella’s bedroom window.
A microphone.
Someone had been listening to my daughter.
May you like
And when Mateo checked the device, he found it was still transmitting.
