Chapter Two: A Signature I Never Gave

Andres's hand was still locked around my wrist when the cellar door swung open above us, and for one full second the only sound in that room was my own pulse slamming in my ears.

Then a voice I did not expect at all called down the stairs.

"Boss? You down there? I heard you might have a problem."

It was Tomas. Our head of security, a broad, slow moving man in his fifties who mostly spent his days checking delivery trucks and telling tourists not to pick the grapes. Tomas, who I had never once seen carry a weapon in four years of working here, was standing at the top of our cellar stairs holding a shotgun like he had been born with it in his hands.

Andres let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, except nothing about his face was laughing.

"Tomas," he said. "You scared us half to death."

"You told me if anyone unfamiliar showed up on the property before seven, I should assume the worst," Tomas said, lowering the gun slightly, though not all the way. "A car I did not recognize just came up the north road. I was not about to wait around and ask questions."

I stared at Andres. My legs still did not feel entirely like my own.

"You told him to bring a gun," I said. "Before seven in the morning. On our own property."

Andres did not answer right away, which told me more than an answer would have.

"There have been threats," he said finally, quietly, like the words cost him something to say out loud. "Since the merger talks started. Nothing I could prove. Emails from unknown addresses, one delivery driver who asked strange questions about our schedule. I did not want to frighten you before I understood what it actually was."

"You did not want to frighten me," I repeated, "so instead you forged my signature and hired an armed man to guard our vineyard in secret."

Tomas, God bless him, chose that exact moment to clear his throat from the top of the stairs.

"I will just, ah, go check on that car," he said, and disappeared back up into the morning light, leaving us alone in a silence that felt heavier than the one before.

Andres finally let go of my wrist. I realized my whole arm had gone slightly numb from how hard he had been holding it.

"Explain the transfer document," I said. "Now. Before Tomas comes back, before your phone rings again, before anyone else arrives at my own home uninvited."

He rubbed a hand across his face, and for the first time since I had known him, he looked old. Not tired. Old.

"I did not forge that," he said. "I swear to you, Camila, I did not touch that paper."

"My name is on it."

"I know."

"In my own handwriting, close enough to fool anyone who was not me."

"I know," he said again, and this time his voice cracked slightly in the middle of the word. "Someone on our own team prepared that transfer. I only found out it existed two days ago, and I have spent every hour since trying to figure out who authorized it before I said anything to you, because I did not want to accuse the wrong person, and I did not want you to panic before I understood how deep this actually goes."

"How deep does it go, Andres?"

He looked at me for a long moment, like he was deciding how much of the truth I could carry before breakfast.

"I think someone has been moving money out of both estates for years," he said. "Long before this merger was ever discussed. I think the merger itself may have been designed, by someone else, specifically to create enough confusion in the paperwork that nobody would notice the theft until it was too late to trace."

My stomach turned over slowly, the way it does when a car goes downhill faster than expected.

"Valentina," I said.

"I do not think so," he said. "I think she is being used exactly the same way we are."

I wanted to believe him. That was the terrifying part. Some old, stubborn piece of me still wanted to believe every word coming out of his mouth, even standing three feet from a safe holding proof that somebody had stolen my own name.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out with hands that had not fully stopped shaking.

It was the unknown number again, the one that had warned me not to sign anything.

Are you safe? I heard there was a security scare at the estate this morning. We need to meet today, not tomorrow. I found the name of the person who actually filed that transfer, and it is not who either of you thinks it is.

I looked up at Andres, who was watching my face carefully, clearly wondering who I was texting at seven in the morning while standing three feet from the evidence of his own family's ruin.

"Who is that," he asked.

I hesitated. Some part of me, the part that had spent six years learning exactly how convincing this man's voice could sound even when he was lying, decided in that moment not to tell him everything. Not yet.

"Renata," I said. "Checking on me."

He nodded slowly, and I could not tell if he believed me or if he was simply choosing, the way I was choosing, to let a lie sit unchallenged for a little while longer.

I typed back to the real sender with my thumb hidden slightly behind my hip.

I am safe. Tell me where and when.

The reply came back almost instantly, faster than felt natural for someone supposedly still afraid of being caught helping me.

The old chapel road, the one behind the Sterling vineyard, eleven o'clock. Come alone. Do not bring your husband. And Camila, one more thing before you go.

I waited, my thumb hovering, dreading whatever came next.

The name on the transfer authorization is Renata Ferreira.

I read it twice. Then a third time, as if the letters might rearrange themselves into something that made sense.

My own sister's name, sitting where a stranger's should be, on the exact document that was going to take everything from me in nineteen days.

I looked up, and Andres was still watching me, waiting for an explanation I no longer had any idea how to give him.