Chapter 4: What the Lawyer Found
My attorney's name was Rodrigo Valls.
He had handled every significant legal matter in my life for fourteen years.
Contracts, acquisitions, one hostile takeover, and the estate arrangements after Camila d*ed.
He was not a man who expressed alarm easily.
When I called him from the hallway and read him four entries from Isabella's notebook, he was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, "Don't touch anything in that house.
Don't move anything.
Don't let her move anything.
I'll be there in two hours."
"It's nearly eight o'clock."
"I know what time it is." A pause.
"How is Isabella?"
"Shaken.
Physically hurt.
Trying not to show either."
"Get her hands photographed.
Tonight.
Use your phone.
Date and time stamp on every image."
I hadn't thought of that.
"All right."
"And the housekeeper — the one who kept the notebook safe — keep her close.
She's your witness."
He ended the call.
I stood in the hallway for a moment.
Through the kitchen doorway I could see the edge of the table where Beatriz was still sitting.
She hadn't moved.
She was looking at her phone.
I went upstairs.
Elena had run a warm bath for Isabella and found clean pyjamas.
Isabella was sitting on the edge of the bed when I came in, her hands wrapped loosely in a soft towel.
She looked smaller than she had in the garden.
Cleaner.
More fragile.
"Can I see your hands?" I asked.
She held them out without hesitating.
I photographed them carefully.
Both palms.
The blisters across the fingers.
The raw skin at the base of her thumbs where the bag handles had cut deepest.
Fourteen photographs in total.
I checked the date and time stamp on each one.
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
"A little." She paused.
"Dad?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to make her leave?"
I looked at her.
"Is that what you want?"
She thought about it for a moment with the seriousness that eight-year-olds bring to questions that matter.
"I want to not be scared in my own house," she said.
I sat down beside her on the bed.
"Then that's what's going to happen."
She leaned against my arm.
I felt the weight of her, slight and warm, and I thought about ninety-three days of entries in a worn yellow notebook and I kept my breathing steady because she needed me steady.
"Elena kept your notebook safe," I said.
"I know." Isabella was quiet for a moment.
"I asked her to.
I told her — if anything happens to me, give it to Dad."
The phrase landed like something physical.
*If anything happens to me.*
An eight-year-old had written those words in her mind before she wrote them in pencil.
"Nothing is going to happen to you," I said.
"I know." She said it simply, without drama.
"You came back."
Rodrigo arrived at half past nine.
He came with a colleague I hadn't met before — a younger woman named Dra.
Lourdes Peña, who, Rodrigo explained quietly in the entrance hall, specialized in family law and child welfare cases.
Beatriz was still in the kitchen when they walked in.
She stood up.
"Who are these people?"
"My attorney," I said.
"And his colleague."
Her eyes moved to Rodrigo.
Then to Lourdes.
Then back to me.
The calculation was visible.
"You called your lawyer." Her voice was measured.
"Over a chore."
Rodrigo set his briefcase on the kitchen table.
"Mrs.
Vidal, I'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."
"I do mind, actually." She looked at me.
"This is our home.
This is a private family matter."
"The notebook," Rodrigo said, "contains ninety-three dated entries documenting a pattern of physical labour imposed on a minor child, food restriction, isolation, confiscation of personal property, and deliberate psychological pressure.
That moves it outside the category of a private family matter."
Beatriz didn't flinch.
"A child's diary is not a legal document."
"No," Rodrigo agreed pleasantly.
"But it is a contemporaneous record.
Combined with photographic evidence of physical injury and a witness statement from your housekeeper, it becomes considerably more significant."
"Elena." Beatriz said the name flatly.
"Of course."
"Mrs.
Vidal." Lourdes spoke for the first time.
Her voice was calm and professional.
"I want to be straightforward with you.
I work with child welfare authorities.
The evidence we have seen tonight meets the threshold for a formal report.
That report will be filed regardless of what happens in this room.
What happens in this room may affect what happens afterward."
Something shifted in Beatriz's face.
Not fear, exactly.
Recalculation.
"I want to speak to my own attorney," she said.
"Of course," Rodrigo said.
"You have that right."
She picked up her phone and walked toward the terrace.
Rodrigo turned to me and lowered his voice.
"There's something else.
When you called, I ran a preliminary check on her financial activity.
The joint account."
"What about it?"
He opened his briefcase and placed a single printed page on the table.
I looked at the numbers.
Then I looked at them again.
In the three months I had been in Dubai, four hundred and thirty thousand euros had moved out of our joint household account in transfers of varying sizes, none large enough individually to trigger an automatic alert.
"Where did it go?" I asked.
Rodrigo tapped the bottom of the page.
An account number.
A bank in Portugal.
"We're still tracing the full picture," he said.
"But the account is registered to a man named Tomás Ferreira."
I didn't recognize the name.
Rodrigo watched my face.
"She's been calling him.
Regularly.
For at least eight months."
Through the glass terrace door, I could see Beatriz standing with her back to us, phone pressed to her ear, one hand moving as she spoke.
Eight months.
Two months before I left for Dubai.
I looked back at the page.
May you like
Four hundred and thirty thousand euros.
And a child kept busy with garbage bags so she wouldn't notice what was disappearing around her.
