Todos os capítulos de The Rival I Let In: Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

I stared at him, fear, anger and surprise trying to take control at the same time. I didn't wake him, instead I stood there in the quiet study, the photograph still trembling slightly between my fingers, and studied it instead, my father, younger than I had ever known him, standing beside a family I only knew through boardroom battles and old battles and grudges. His teeth glistening against the sunlight, his smile so bright my heart skipped a beat at the memory. It wasn't the practiced, careful smile he wore for board meetings or family photographs later on in life. It was something genuine and real. Julianii's father had one hand resting on my father's shoulder, easy and familiar, the kind of gesture that belonged between old friends, not enemies waiting to destroy each other. They didn't look like men in a business collapse, they looked like men who trusted each other completely, and that confused me more than anything Vesper had shown me in his office."Sabine!"

I read as far as the letter would let me. It was incomplete, with several pages clearly missing, the remaining ones numbered in a way that left obvious gaps, and whole sections of whatever Aurelio Marchetti had written to my grandmother simply gone. Someone had removed them deliberately and carefully, leaving just enough behind to prove something had once existed without ever explaining what.What survived, suggested something deliberate. My grandmother and Julianii's father had shared knowledge about something significant enough that Aurelio had felt the need to remind her of a promise she apparently made, a promise to keep whatever was hidden.Hidden from whom? That, I couldn't tell. The pages that would have explained it weren't there.I read the surviving lines three, four times, hoping something new would surface each time I saw some details I had overlooked. Nothing did, the words stayed as careful and incomplete as they had been the first time.I sat with the letter for a long

I stood there for a long moment before I let myself react. My first instinct was thinking of Julianii. He was the obvious answer, the one person who knew the letter existed, the one person who had a reason to want whatever it revealed. But I made myself slow down before I let that thought settle into certainty. Certainty felt dangerous right now, the kind of thing that could ruin something real if I got it wrong.It could have been him, It could also have been Vesper, who asked about the bedroom that very afternoon, he asked far too casually for a question that specific. It could have been Mireille, though I dismissed that almost as quickly as I considered it, she had never once shown interest in anything beyond the legal side of the estate, and I couldn't imagine her sneaking into a locked drawer for any reason. It could have been someone amongst the staff, someone who worked in this house long enough to move through it unnoticed, who knew which floorboards creaked and which doors st

I spent the next day trying not to think about those words. I didn't tell Julianii, I told myself there was nothing worth telling yet, nothing solid enough to bring to him without sounding like I was accusing him of something he might not even understand himself. Instead, I found myself watching him more carefully than usual, observing small things I hadn't paid close attention to before, the way he checked the locks on the doors before bed each night, the way he never quite relaxed in rooms with too many exits, small habits I never fully registered until now.He noticed, of course, he noticed everything."Are you angry with me?" he asked at breakfast, setting down his cup with a care that suggested he had been bracing up to the question for a while."No.""Did I do something?""No," I said again, I heard the softness in the way he asked, patient rather than defensive, careful rather than wounded. It struck me, not for the first time, but how thoroughly he had studied m

I didn't open it, it belonged to Julianii, or at least to his family, and after everything I had already taken upon myself to uncover quietly, I didn't want to add this to the list of things I looked into behind his back. There had already been enough of that between us, whether he knew it or not, and I was done adding to the pile.I waited until he came back into the kitchen and held it out to him instead.He looked at it, and something crossed his face that I hadn't seen before, genuine surprise, unguarded enough, that I knew immediately he hadn't put it there himself. For a man who controlled every expression so carefully, the shift was almost startling to witness."Where did you find this?""On the counter, I don't know how it got here." He turned it over slowly, studying the handwriting, his jaw tightening. "This is my father's writing!" "It's addressed to my grandmother.""And It's never been opened," he said quietly, his thumb tracing the edge of the