Chương 9
“For money?”
“No.”
“Fear?”
“Partly.”
“Of Gabriel?”
“Of what would happen if I told you how much authority he had taken.”
Alejandro almost laughed.
Dominic continued. “You punish people for bringing problems after they become serious. You punish them for not bringing problems sooner. After a while, everyone tries to guess which punishment they can survive.”
The fireplace had not been lit. Without it, the room felt larger and colder.
“You threatened Emma’s mother’s job,” Alejandro said.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“I needed the child to obey me.”
“She was right.”
“I know.”
“And you were bigger.”
Dominic looked away.
Alejandro touched the edge of the desk. “Leave.”
“Am I fired?”
“Not today.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No. It is not.”
After Dominic left, Sofia came in carrying a cardboard cup and a box of documents.
“You enjoy conversations that make everyone miserable,” she said.
“He told the truth.”
“People often do after ten days of legal pressure.”
She set the box on the desk. “The forensic accountant found transfers.”
“Gabriel?”
“Companies controlled by him moved eleven million dollars from two construction projects through fake subcontractors.”
Alejandro opened the first file.
“He thought I found it.”
“You did find part of it. Your notes are on the internal audit.”
Alejandro remembered confronting Gabriel three weeks earlier about payroll discrepancies. Gabriel had shrugged, blamed software migration, and promised corrected numbers.
That same night, a photograph of Isabella had disappeared from the study.
The camera had been installed the next morning.
Sofia pulled out a chair. “He did not poison you only because you might fire him.”
“No.”
“He believes you were preparing to turn him over to federal investigators.”
“I was considering it.”
“You never told me.”
“I told no one.”
“Then how would he know?”
Alejandro looked at the open files.
The answer arrived without drama.
“Mercer.”
Sofia’s expression changed.
Daniel Mercer had advised Alejandro to cooperate quietly with federal investigators if the financial theft touched union pension funds or public contracts. The conversation had happened in the study six days before the poisoning.
The hidden camera had recorded it.
If Gabriel accessed the camera system, he may have watched the meeting.
Sofia stood.
“Call Brooks.”
Alejandro did not move.
“What?”
“If we give them that recording, we give them everything around it.”
“So?”
He looked at her.
She understood.
The meeting with Mercer occurred less than an hour after Alejandro had spoken with a warehouse supervisor named Frank Deluca. During that earlier conversation, Alejandro had instructed Deluca to “solve” a problem involving a driver who had been stealing from one of their companies.
The driver was assaulted that night.
He survived with a broken jaw and two fractured ribs.
Alejandro had never used the words hurt him. He had not needed to.
Sofia pressed her fingertips against the desk.
“Delete the Deluca conversation.”
“No.”
“Then isolate the Mercer segment.”
“Mercer already suggested that.”
“For once, listen to him.”
Alejandro looked toward the empty space where Isabella’s photograph had stood.
“If Gabriel’s attorney learns the file was edited, he attacks the whole recording.”
“Then we provide a forensic copy with protected sections.”
“Protected from whom?”
“From the public. From unrelated investigators.”
“You think the government will ignore a recorded order connected to an assault?”
“No.”
The word came softly.
Alejandro turned back to her.
Sofia sat down again. “No, I don’t.”
For several minutes, neither spoke.
Outside the tall window, a groundskeeper pushed a cart of trimmed palm leaves toward the service road. The wheels squeaked every few feet.
“You said we prove it,” Alejandro said.
“I also said you could not kill him.”
“This is the other option.”
“There are more than two options.”
“Name one that clears Elena, convicts Gabriel, and keeps me untouched.”
Sofia looked at him with tired anger. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The part where justice is acceptable only if it stops exactly one inch from you.”
He closed the file.
She stood and gathered her coffee. “Emma spent her only medicine because she did not calculate what you deserved. I am not asking you to become like her. I am asking you to notice what that revealed about the rest of us.”
She left the documents on his desk.
That night, Alejandro watched thirty-one days of study recordings alone.
Most contained nothing dramatic. He watched Elena dusting trophies while talking to herself about grocery prices. He watched Lillian straighten the same photograph four times. He watched Dominic enter, forget why he had come, and stand for nearly a minute staring at the fireplace. He watched himself eat dinner at the desk, take calls, sign papers, and ignore messages from Sofia.
The camera made power look dull.
Men entered with fear and left with instructions. People agreed too quickly. They laughed at jokes that were not funny. Alejandro saw how often he interrupted, how rarely anyone finished a sentence he disliked.
At 11:43 p.m. on the sixth day, Gabriel entered the study when the house was quiet.
He removed Isabella’s photograph from the shelf.
He did not steal it. He opened the frame, photographed the handwritten note hidden behind the picture, and returned the frame slightly out of place.
Alejandro paused the recording.
The note contained a list of trust-account numbers Isabella had discovered before her death. She had suspected Gabriel was using family charities to hide stolen funds. Alejandro had kept the note because it was the last thing she wrote in the house.
Gabriel had not known the camera existed then.
Two days later, Victor installed it.
On the morning of the poisoning, the recording showed Gabriel entering at 1:52 p.m. He walked directly to the bookshelf, looked into the lens, and smiled.
Then he reached behind the books.
The image vanished for three seconds.
When it returned, he was gone.
He had discovered the camera before the attack.
Alejandro replayed the smile.
May you like
It was not triumph. It was relief.
Gabriel had found the thing threatening him and believed he could control it.
