Chương 8
“I hope you know I’m only asking questions because I care about this family.”
Sebastian looked at him.
The room became quiet.
“I know exactly why you’re asking.”
Ricardo sighed.
“I don’t want conflict.”
“No.”
Sebastian’s voice remained calm.
“You want control without looking like you want control.”
Several people shifted uncomfortably.
Ricardo’s expression hardened.
“That is unfair.”
“Is it?”
Sebastian placed a folder on the table.
“I reviewed the leaked documents.”
Ricardo said nothing.
“They are real.”
A few people exchanged looks.
“But incomplete.”
Sebastian opened the folder.
“They show losses from years ago.”
He looked around the room.
“They do not show the recovery plan.”
He turned a page.
“They do not show the contracts that stabilized the company.”
Another page.
“They do not show the decisions that prevented bankruptcy.”
The room became quieter.
Ricardo’s calm expression changed slightly.
Just enough.
Clara would have missed it if she had not spent months learning how Sebastian watched people.
The problem was not that Ricardo had been caught.
The problem was that Ricardo had expected Sebastian to stay silent.
“I didn’t hide anything,” Sebastian said.
A board member interrupted.
“But you did not reveal everything publicly.”
Sebastian accepted the criticism.
“No.”
That surprised everyone.
“I made mistakes.”
The room went still.
He continued.
“I believed fixing the problem mattered more than explaining the problem.”
He looked down briefly.
“That was wrong.”
Clara watched from the waiting area outside.
She was not inside the meeting.
Sebastian had insisted she stay out of it.
But she knew him well enough now to understand why.
He was afraid her presence would make people think he needed protection.
He still cared too much about appearing strong.
After the meeting ended, Sebastian walked out with a group of executives behind him.
His face revealed nothing.
But Clara noticed the way he released a slow breath when he saw her.
Like seeing her reminded him he was not carrying everything alone.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“Complicated.”
“That means bad.”
“It means complicated.”
She smiled slightly.
“You really like that word.”
“It covers many situations.”
“Such as?”
“Situations where I don’t know what happens next.”
The honesty made her quiet.
Because Sebastian had built his entire identity around always knowing what happened next.
That afternoon, Victor brought new information.
The documents had not been leaked only to damage Sebastian.
They had been used to pressure specific investors.
Someone wanted the company’s stock price to fall.
“Why?” Clara asked.
Victor answered,
“So someone could buy control at a lower value.”
Sebastian looked at the papers.
“Ricardo.”
“Possibly.”
The word bothered him.
Possibly.
Not certainty.
Not yet.
And Sebastian hated uncertainty.
“We need proof.”
Victor nodded.
“We’re working on it.”
The investigation changed after that.
It was no longer about defending a reputation.
It was about finding who had been moving pieces behind the scenes.
Clara became part of the process in an unexpected way.
Not because she understood business.
She did not.
But because she noticed things other people ignored.
One evening, she found a photograph in Sebastian’s office.
It was not the old photograph of his sister.
It was a newer one.
A company event from several years earlier.
Ricardo stood beside Sebastian.
But someone else appeared in the background.
A woman Clara did not recognize.
“Who is she?”
Sebastian looked at the picture.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
Clara pointed.
“She’s looking at your uncle.”
Sebastian took the photograph.
He studied it.
“You notice strange things.”
“People say that like it’s bad.”
“It isn’t.”
The answer came faster than expected.
He looked at the picture again.
Then he stopped.
“What?”
Sebastian moved closer.
“Wait.”
He took out his phone and enlarged the image.
The woman in the background was holding something.
A folder.
On it was a company logo.
But not his current company logo.
An older one.
The one used before Sebastian rebuilt the business.
“Where did you find this?”
“In your office.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
He looked at her.
“You didn’t think to tell me?”
“You were angry yesterday.”
“I was not angry.”
“You closed three doors while walking to your office.”
Sebastian looked embarrassed.
“I didn’t realize I did that.”
“I did.”
For a moment, they both forgot the investigation.
They were simply two people standing in a room, learning each other’s habits.
Then Sebastian looked back at the photograph.
“This woman matters.”
“Why?”
“Because that logo was only used by people connected to my father’s original company.”
Clara felt the shift.
Another piece of the past had appeared.
Another question.
Another hidden connection.
Sebastian searched through old records that night.
Near midnight, he found a name.
His expression changed when he read it.
Clara noticed immediately.
“Who is she?”
Sebastian stared at the screen.
“Her name is Elena Voss.”
“And?”
He swallowed.
“She was my father’s financial adviser.”
Clara waited.
Then Sebastian said the part that made everything worse.
“She disappeared the same month my father died.”
The room went silent.
Outside, the mansion remained still.
But inside, the past Sebastian had buried for years had started returning.
The room went silent.
Outside, the mansion remained still.
But inside, the past Sebastian had buried for years had started returning.
Sebastian spent the entire night searching through old records.
Clara stayed with him, not because she understood every document or every business term, but because she understood what it meant to sit beside someone who was afraid of what they might find.
At three in the morning, Sebastian finally found an old file hidden in a private archive.
The papers were damaged.
Some pages were missing.
But one signature remained clear.
Elena Voss.
And beside her name was a transfer record connected to Ricardo Montemayor.
Sebastian stared at it for a long time.
“My father trusted her.”
Clara looked at the documents.
“Your uncle did too.”
“Yes.”
His voice became quieter.
May you like
“That is what makes this worse.”
They discovered that Elena had not disappeared because she had done something wrong.
