Romans de MANSANASs

Day 20 — 7:30 AMAlison Carter had barely touched her breakfast when her phone rang.Agustin Reyes.She answered immediately."Tell me you have something.""I have a lead," he replied. "Whether it's something useful depends on what we find today."Alison reached for her coffee. "That's becoming your favorite sentence.""And yet you keep answering my calls.""Because somebody has to make sure you don't spend the entire day reading old paperwork.""I was going to say the same thing about you."Despite herself, Alison smiled.Then Agustin's tone changed."We checked the name Teresa sent us. The handwriting is unclear, but the most likely reading is L. Montefalco. There was a senior administrative officer with that surname working with the executive office in 2006."Alison's smile faded."Who?""Leonard Montefalco."She knew the name.Everyone at Walker & Montefalco knew it.Leonard Montefalco had been a senior member of the founding family, a man whose influence had helped shape the comp

Day 19 — 9:05 AMAlison Carter arrived at the café fifteen minutes before the agreed meeting time.She chose a table near the window, where she could see the entrance and the street beyond it. Agustin had offered to accompany her, but she had declined. Teresa Vale had agreed to speak with her, and Alison wanted to give the woman a chance to explain herself without feeling surrounded by investigators.Still, Alison had shared the meeting location and time with Agustin. She had also forwarded every message from the anonymous sender to their investigator.She wasn't going to confuse independence with recklessness.Her coffee sat untouched beside her phone.At exactly nine fifteen, a woman in her late fifties entered the café. She wore a cream blouse beneath a dark cardigan and carried a brown leather handbag that appeared older than the phone in her hand.She scanned the room, then approached Alison's table."Miss Carter?""Alison, please."The woman hesitated before sitting down."I'm T

Day 18 — 8:15 AMAlison Carter arrived at Walker & Montefalco Tower earlier than usual.For the first time in days, she had managed to sleep for more than four hours. It wasn't peaceful sleep, exactly. Her dreams had been filled with old photographs, unfinished letters, and a dark sedan that disappeared whenever she tried to see its license plate.But she had rested.And today, she intended to find answers.Her phone vibrated just as she stepped out of the elevator on the thirty-fifth floor.A message from Agustin.AGUSTIN: The archive office responded. They found a temporary transfer slip connected to Document 06-1847. We need to see the original.Alison stopped walking.A transfer slip.It was the first concrete movement in their search since discovering that the correspondence file had gone missing.ALISON: Does it say who received the file?The reply came less than a minute later.AGUSTIN: Not in the copy they sent. There's a handwritten signature on the original. We're meeting th

Day 17 — 6:50 AMAlison's Apartment, MakatiAlison woke with a single thought.The authorization file.For days, she had chased fragments of her father's past: a photograph, two letters, an incomplete police report, and anonymous messages that seemed to arrive whenever she uncovered something important.Now she finally had a specific lead.The original vehicle assignment register contained the name M. Carter beside a private pickup request dated three days before Carlos Carter's fatal accident. The authorization field was blank.The anonymous sender insisted that the missing file mattered.But Alison had made herself a promise the night before.She would investigate every claim without allowing anyone to dictate what she should believe.Her phone rang at 7:02 AM.“Alison,” Agustin said, “the records office has responded to our request.”She sat up immediately.“Did they find the file?”“They located an inventory entry for a box containing authorization forms from 2006. The box is stil

Day 16 — 6:35 AMAlison's Apartment, MakatiAlison had learned that secrets rarely revealed themselves all at once.Sometimes, they arrived as anonymous messages. Sometimes, they appeared in faded photographs or incomplete company records. And sometimes, they hid inside a single line on a document that everyone had forgotten existed.Look for the name beside the final vehicle assignment.That was the anonymous sender's latest instruction.Alison sat at her dining table, her laptop open and a notebook beside it. She had written the sentence three times, hoping that repetition might help her understand what the sender wanted.It didn't.Her phone rang.“Good morning,” Agustin Reyes said.“Please tell me you found something.”“I found a possible lead. The archive department located an index of vehicle assignments from 2006. Unfortunately, the index doesn't contain the complete records.”“But it has names?”“It has several. Your father's name appears in a section covering the weeks before

Day 15 — 7:15 AMAlison's Apartment, MakatiAlison had one message written at the top of her notebook.Ask Daniel what happened to the inspection report.The anonymous sender had repeated the same clue twice. That alone didn't make it true, but it made the question impossible to ignore.She checked her phone.Investigator Agustin Reyes had sent an update.AGUSTIN: Daniel Flores confirmed our meeting for 9:30 AM. I'll meet you at the records office. Please let him speak without showing him the anonymous messages.Alison replied with a simple acknowledgment.Then she opened the photograph of her father.Carlos Carter had been gone for twenty years. For most of Alison's life, she'd remembered him through Elena's stories: a hardworking man who sold fishballs, loved his family, and died in a tragic accident.Now she knew he had been Ricardo Walker's son. He had worked as a personal driver for the Walker family, carried questions about his mother, and apparently worried about a vehicle he h