Chapter 4: What Isabella Remembered
Isabella was awake when I came upstairs.
She was sitting on her bed in the clean pyjamas the housekeeper, Rosario, had helped her change into.
Her hands were wrapped in soft gauze.
She had her knees pulled to her chest and she was watching the door like she had been listening for footsteps.
"Is she angry?" Isabella asked.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
"You don't need to worry about that."
"That means yes."
"It means it doesn't matter." I looked at her hands.
"How do they feel?"
"Better." She paused.
"Rosario put something on them.
It was cold."
"Good."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Dad.
Are you going to send me away?"
The question landed like something physical.
"What?"
"Beatriz said—" She stopped.
Started again.
"She said that if I ever told you anything, you would send me to boarding school in England.
Because you wouldn't want to deal with the problem yourself."
I kept my face still.
"She said that to you."
Isabella nodded.
"More than once."
"When was the first time?"
She thought about it.
"About two weeks after you left for Dubai.
She sat me down at the kitchen table and she explained the rules." Isabella said the word rules the way a child says a word they have heard too many times from an adult.
Flat.
Rehearsed.
Worn smooth.
"She said the rules were for my benefit.
So I would learn to be capable."
"What were the rules?"
Isabella looked at her wrapped hands.
"I had to make my own bed before seven in the morning.
I had to wash my own dishes after every meal.
I had to clean the downstairs bathroom on Mondays and Thursdays.
And I had to take the rubbish out every day before noon."
She recited them without emotion.
Like a timetable.
"If I didn't finish," she continued, "she would add more the next day.
And if I complained, she said she would call you in Dubai and tell you I was being difficult.
That I was making her life impossible.
That you should come home and deal with me yourself."
"And you believed she would do that."
"She showed me her phone once." Isabella's voice didn't waver.
"She had a message already typed out.
It said I had been stealing from her purse and lying about it.
She said all she had to do was press send."
I looked at my daughter.
Eight years old.
Sitting across a kitchen table from a grown woman who had typed a false accusation into a phone and held it up like a weapon.
"Isabella." I waited until she looked at me.
"I want you to know something.
I would never have believed that message.
Not for one second."
She studied my face.
"How do I know that's true?"
"Because I know you."
She was quiet.
Then, very quietly: "She said you didn't, really.
She said you were always working.
She said I was basically a stranger to you."
That one I felt in my chest.
"She was wrong," I said.
Isabella looked down at her hands.
"She also said—" She stopped.
"You can tell me."
"She said my real father would have wanted to know me.
But he wasn't allowed to."
The room went still.
I kept my voice steady.
"Did she tell you anything else about that?"
"She said he lived in Madrid.
She said his name was Marcos." Isabella looked up at me.
"She said someday he might come and take me to live with him.
And that I should be ready."
I stood up slowly and walked to the window.
The garden below was dark now.
The dumpsters near the hedge were still there, the torn bag replaced, everything tidied as if nothing had happened.
Beatriz had not just been working Isabella like a servant for three months.
She had been preparing her.
Conditioning her.
Building a story in an eight-year-old's mind about who her real father was, who had a claim on her, and why the man who had raised her might one day simply let her go.
I turned back to Isabella.
"You are not going anywhere," I said.
"Not to England.
Not to Madrid.
Not anywhere."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Promise?"
"Promise."
She nodded once.
Then she lay down and pulled the blanket up to her chin, and I sat beside her until her breathing slowed and her eyes closed.
I waited until I was sure she was asleep.
Then I went back downstairs, picked up my phone, and called my lawyer.
He answered on the second ring.
"Alejandro.
It's late."
"I know," I said.
"I need you to find out everything you can about a man named Marcos Reyes.
And I need a family law specialist in my office by nine tomorrow morning."
A pause.
"How serious is this?"
I looked at the garden through the kitchen window.
"She had a message typed into her phone," I said.
"Ready to send.
A false accusation against my eight-year-old daughter.
She used it to keep Isabella silent for three months."
Alejandro was quiet for a moment.
"I'll make the calls tonight."
"One more thing," I said.
"She mentioned documents.
Financial records.
She claims someone named Marcos Reyes has access to information about the company."
The silence on the other end changed quality.
"I'll call the security firm as well," Alejandro said.
"First thing."
I hung up and stood in the dark kitchen for a moment.
Somewhere upstairs, Beatriz was in the guest room.
May you like
I had heard the door close an hour ago.
And somewhere in Madrid, a man named Marcos Reyes had documents he was not supposed to have.
