Chapter 7: The Night She Tried to Run
I found out at eleven that night.
Dolores knocked on my study door.
She had been putting Isabella to bed and had passed Beatriz's room on the way back.
The door had been open.
Beatriz had not heard her in the hallway.
"She was on the phone," Dolores said.
"I only heard a few seconds.
I wasn't trying to listen."
"What did you hear?"
Dolores folded her hands in front of her.
"She said, 'It has to be tonight.
He knows about Cádiz.'"
I was already reaching for my phone before Dolores finished the sentence.
Marcos answered on the first ring.
I told him what Dolores had heard.
"Her passport," he said immediately.
"And any joint accounts — check whether she has signatory access to anything she could move."
"She doesn't.
Everything is structured through the company."
"Personal accounts?"
"Separate.
She controls those herself."
"Then she's not running with your money.
She's running before the audit closes around her." A pause.
"Or she's going to Mendoza."
"Same thing."
"Call me when you know where she is.
Do not try to stop her physically.
Let her go if she goes.
We want her to make the move."
I hung up and went to the hallway.
Beatriz's room was dark under the door.
I stood there for a moment.
Then I went back to my study and opened my laptop.
The villa had a security system I had installed three years ago.
Cameras at the main gate, the garage, and the rear garden entrance.
I had never had reason to look at the footage before.
I looked at it now.
At twelve forty-seven in the morning, Beatriz came down the back stairs with a single rolling suitcase.
She had changed into dark clothing.
She moved quickly and without turning on any lights, which told me she had planned the route in advance.
She went out through the rear garden entrance.
A car was waiting on the service road.
I couldn't see the plates clearly.
But I could see the driver's side window come down as she reached the car, and I could see her lean in and speak to whoever was inside.
She got in.
The car moved.
I sent the footage to Marcos.
Then I sat in the silence of my study and thought about the four years I had been married to that woman.
The wedding in Seville.
The early months when she had been warm and attentive and interested in Isabella in a way that had seemed, at the time, like genuine affection.
I thought about the moment I had decided to trust her.
I had been wrong about people before in business.
It happened.
You learned from it and you moved on.
But Isabella had not chosen this.
Isabella had been eight years old, left alone in this house with a woman who had seen her as an obstacle, and she had carried garbage until her hands bled and learned not to cry because crying changed nothing.
That was not a business mistake.
My phone lit up.
Marcos.
"The car is registered to a rental company in Marbella," he said.
"Rented yesterday under a name I don't recognize.
We're running it now."
"Mendoza?"
"Possibly a proxy.
But there's something else." His voice shifted.
"Sofia found something in the Cádiz company records.
The capital that was redirected out of the Luxembourg entity two years ago — it didn't disappear.
It was moved into a private account in Portugal."
"Whose account?"
"That's what we're still working on.
But Sofia thinks the account was opened in preparation for something.
A destination account.
Somewhere to land money quickly and cleanly."
"She was planning to take something from me and move it there."
"That's what it looks like."
I looked at the frozen image on my laptop screen.
Beatriz at the rear gate.
The suitcase.
The waiting car.
"She's going to Mendoza," I said.
"And she thinks she still has something she can use."
May you like
"Let her think it," Marcos said.
"By morning, we'll know what it is."
