Chapter 5: The Document She Took
I didn't move from the study.
I set the paper down on the desk and I stood very still, because I needed to think before I acted and I knew that if I went upstairs with nothing but anger, Paulina would be ready for it.
She had planned this.
That was the thing I kept returning to.
Not a woman who had reacted badly to a surprise this morning.
A woman who had been arranging pieces for a long time, and who had come downstairs today not in panic but in control, because she already knew how the board was positioned before the game began.
I called my lawyer.
His name was Edmund, and he had handled my family's legal affairs for eleven years.
He picked up on the second ring.
"I need you here today," I said.
"This afternoon if possible."
"What's happened?"
"A document is missing from my safe.
The original shareholder agreement from Hartwell Capital.
The one with the inheritance clause."
A silence.
"Daniel." His voice changed.
"That document is the only copy with your father's original signature.
If someone has that—"
"I know what it means."
"Who had access?"
"That's what I need you here to help me determine."
"I'll be there by two," he said.
"Don't touch anything in that room.
Don't confront anyone yet.
Let me get there first."
I agreed.
I ended the call and sat down in the chair behind the desk.
The blank paper with Paulina's four words was still in front of me.
I turned it face down.
Marisol appeared in the doorway.
"Is it serious?" she asked.
"Yes."
She came in and sat in the chair across from the desk — the chair where clients used to sit when my father ran the business from this room.
She folded her hands in her lap.
"She knew about the document," I said.
It wasn't a question.
"I don't know what she knew," Marisol said.
"But she was in this room for a long time.
And she asked me, that day, whether you kept important papers at home or only at the office.
I told her I didn't know.
She smiled and said it didn't matter."
"She was already looking."
"I think so."
I looked at her.
"How long have you known that she knew about Valentina?"
Marisol was quiet for a moment.
"About eighteen months after Valentina was born, Paulina came to the house while you were traveling.
She asked to speak with me privately.
She sat in the kitchen and she was very calm, very polite.
She told me she had done some research.
She said she knew that I had worked for you before Valentina was born, and that I had left for seven months and then come back, and that the timing was — her word — interesting."
"What did you say?"
"I said I had gone home to care for a sick relative."
"And she believed you?"
"No," Marisol said.
"She didn't believe me.
But she didn't push it that day.
She just said that she hoped I understood the importance of loyalty, and that people who were loyal were taken care of, and people who weren't sometimes found themselves in very difficult situations." She paused.
"Then she left.
She was smiling when she walked out."
The room was very quiet.
"She was managing you," I said.
"Yes."
"For years."
"Yes."
I stood up and walked to the window.
The garden was bright outside, ordinary and unhurried, completely indifferent to what was happening inside the house.
"Marisol," I said without turning around.
"I need to ask you something and I need you to answer me honestly."
"All right."
"Is there anything else?
Anything at all that you haven't told me yet?
Because I am about to start a process that cannot be stopped once it begins, and I need to know everything before Edmund gets here."
The silence behind me lasted long enough that I turned around.
Marisol's hands were no longer folded in her lap.
One of them had moved to her collar, and her fingers were resting against a thin chain around her neck that I had never noticed before.
She pulled it out slowly.
May you like
At the end of the chain was a small key.
"There is one more thing," she said.
