Chapter 7 - THREE HUNDRED FAMILIES
Aline did not take the check.
She did not sleep either.
Three hundred families.
Maybe true.
Maybe manipulation.
Probably both.
That was the worst kind.
The next morning, she called Bernardo.
He was still suspended.
He answered from his apartment.
“I heard you’re a criminal now.”
“Apparently.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
She liked him immediately.
She asked how many Vale employees were actually at risk.
Bernardo explained.
Three hundred direct.
More contractors.
But refinancing without restructuring would only delay collapse.
Eduardo had been using new loans to pay old loans.
Aline sat quietly.
“So saving the company means not saving him.”
“Exactly.”
That sentence changed her thinking.
She called Mariana.
Then Heitor.
Then, through counsel, the credit committee.
Aline had no authority over the loan.
She did have evidence relevant to the fraud case.
She offered to testify about Eduardo’s attempted payoff.
The committee agreed to consider a restructuring that protected payroll while removing Vale family control.
Eduardo found out.
He called Aline a destroyer on television.
Samantha cried beside him.
“She wants our company.”
Aline was literally baking pão de mel when she saw the clip.
She laughed so hard she burned a tray.
Lucas came in.
“What?”
“She says I want a development company.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t even want a second oven right now.”
The joke ended when a brick came through the window.
It struck Lucas in the shoulder.
He fell.
Aline screamed.
Blood appeared where glass cut his neck.
The injury was not life-threatening.
It did not feel small.
Police found a note wrapped around the brick.
GOLD DIGGER.
Heitor arrived at the hospital.
Aline saw him in the hallway.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“I just—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.”
He nodded.
She was shaking.
“My brother got hurt because people think I’m sleeping my way into your money.”
Heitor’s face went white.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You get security.”
“Drivers.”
“Lawyers.”
“I get a broken window and a sixteen-year-old bleeding on a kitchen floor.”
Heitor said nothing.
Good.
Then Aline started crying.
“I liked you.”
He looked at her.
She wiped her face angrily.
“There.”
“Now everybody gets what they wanted.”
Heitor’s voice was quiet.
“I liked you too.”
“Past tense?”
“I’m trying not to make this harder.”
Aline laughed through tears.
“Too late.”
Heitor took one step closer.
Then stopped himself.
That restraint mattered more than touching her.
Police arrested the brick thrower that night.
A twenty-two-year-old social media follower.
No connection to Samantha.
That was somehow worse.
Samantha had not needed to order violence.
She only needed to point a crowd.
Then investigators found the missing Luisa unconscious in a motel room.
Beside her was a typed confession claiming she alone created every forged document.
Mariana read it.
“She didn’t write this.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Luisa is left-handed.”
The confession was signed in blue ink by someone using their right hand.
May you like
And the motel camera showed Samantha entering the room two hours earlier.
