Chapter 13 - THE SAFE BEHIND MY DESK
Three weeks after the arrests, investigators returned the villa to me.
I did not move Isabella back.
Not yet.
She said the house made her stomach hurt.
That was enough.
We rented a smaller home near the beach.
No staff except Marta, who agreed to help temporarily.
No marble entrance.
No formal dining room.
No service corridors.
Isabella loved it.
One Saturday, I returned to the villa alone to collect documents.
Inside my study, one painting hung crooked.
I almost ignored it.
Then I remembered Mateo standing beside that wall in the photograph from Beatriz’s phone.
I removed the painting.
There was a safe.
Not mine.
Installed inside my wall.
Gabriel came immediately.
Police opened it.
Inside were passports.
Cash.
USB drives.
And copies of company documents.
There was also a file marked ISABELLA.
I felt sick before opening it.
Inside were photographs.
Not abusive images.
Surveillance.
Isabella leaving school.
Isabella with Marta.
Isabella sitting beside me at a restaurant.
Isabella visiting Elena’s grave with me.
Dates covered three years.
Before Dubai.
Before the fraud.
Before I even proposed to Beatriz.
“Why would she have these?”
Gabriel asked.
I knew the answer was not good.
The final document explained part of it.
It was an old trust statement.
Elena’s estate.
Before she died, my first wife placed a portion of her family wealth into a protected trust for Isabella.
I knew that.
What I did not know was the current value.
Twenty-eight million euros.
The trust could not be touched until Isabella turned twenty-five.
Except for education, medical care, and certain guardian-approved expenses.
Beatriz had searched the structure repeatedly.
Handwritten notes appeared beside sections of the document.
Guardian remarriage.
Residential placement.
Incapacity of surviving parent.
Successor guardian.
My name was underlined.
Then another name had been written beneath it.
BEATRIZ.
I stared at the page.
Gabriel spoke carefully.
“She could never simply take Isabella’s trust.”
“I know.”
“But if something happened to you, she may have hoped to become guardian.”
I looked at him.
“What kind of something?”
He did not answer.
He did not need to.
Then police examined the USB drives.
One contained copies of my travel schedules.
Dubai.
London.
Madrid.
Another contained documents about my private aircraft.
Maintenance records.
Pilot rosters.
Security procedures.
The financial case suddenly felt smaller.
May you like
Beatriz and Mateo had not only studied Isabella’s money.
They had studied what would happen if I disappeared.
