Chapter 4: The Name She Should Not Have Known
I didn't sleep that night.
I moved Isabella to the guest suite at the far end of the villa, away from the room she had shared a wall with Beatriz.
I sat on the edge of her bed until her breathing slowed and her hands — clean now, bandaged in white gauze — finally uncurled against the pillow.
She looked smaller asleep.
Children always do.
But there was something else.
Even unconscious, there was a tension in her small shoulders that should not have been there.
I turned off the lamp and went to my study.
My lawyer, Marcos, answered on the second ring despite the hour.
"I've read the notebook," he said.
"Dolores needs to make a formal statement.
Can she do that tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"Good.
And the recording — the phone call you overheard from the garden.
You didn't record it yourself?"
"No."
"Then it's your testimony only.
Still useful, but we need corroboration.
The notebook helps.
A statement from Isabella, even a short one taken properly with a child specialist present, would help more."
"I'm not putting Isabella in a room with a lawyer tomorrow."
"Not tomorrow.
But soon." A pause.
"What did Beatriz say to you tonight?"
I told him.
Including the last line.
*You have no idea what I know about you.*
Marcos was quiet for a moment.
"What do you think she meant?"
"I don't know yet."
"Has she made any threats before?
To anyone?
To Isabella?"
"According to the notebook, she told Isabella I would send her away if she talked."
"That's a threat to a child designed to ensure silence.
That's significant." Another pause.
"Get some sleep.
I'll be there by nine."
I set the phone down and looked at the wall of my study.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Four hundred real estate files.
Contracts, surveys, valuations, partnership agreements.
I had built the company from a single apartment block in Málaga when I was twenty-six years old.
I had never once hidden anything in this room.
I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk.
The folder Beatriz had given me eighteen months ago was still there.
Her financial disclosure.
Required before the prenuptial agreement was signed.
I had reviewed it with Marcos at the time and found nothing unusual.
I opened it now and read it differently.
Her declared assets.
Her previous address in Madrid.
The name of her former employer.
And then a name in the references section I had never paid attention to before.
*Character reference provided by: Rafael Mendoza.*
I stared at the name.
Rafael Mendoza was not a stranger.
He was a business rival.
A man I had beaten to a major development contract in Valencia three years ago.
A man who had told a mutual contact, afterward, that he would find a way to make me regret it.
I had dismissed it at the time as the kind of thing men say when they lose.
I sat back in my chair.
Beatriz had come into my life eight months after Valencia.
I picked up my phone and called Marcos back.
He answered immediately.
"What is it?"
"The prenuptial disclosure.
The reference.
Rafael Mendoza."
A long pause.
"Say that again."
"Beatriz listed Rafael Mendoza as a character reference when she signed the prenup.
I never looked at it closely."
"I did," Marcos said slowly.
"I remember the name.
I didn't connect it."
"Connect it now."
I heard him moving.
Papers.
A drawer opening.
"If there's a prior relationship between Beatriz and Mendoza," he said, "and if this marriage was not incidental—"
"Then it was deliberate."
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"I'll pull everything on Mendoza by morning," Marcos said.
"Don't say anything to Beatriz.
Not yet."
"I won't."
"And lock the study."
I looked at the folder in my hands.
"Marcos.
Is it possible she was placed here?"
He didn't answer right away.
May you like
When he did, his voice was careful.
"I think we need to find out what she meant when she said she knows something about you."
