Todos os capítulos de The Rival I Let In: Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

I read the sentence again.“Julianii must never know what Sabine's father did.”The ink was the same as the rest of my grandmother's signature, steady and unhurried. She hadn't scribbled it in a panic. She had written it the way she wrote everything, like a decision she had already made.I sat at my desk with the photocopy spread in front of me and couldn't decide which possibility frightened me more. That my father had played some part in the collapse of the Marchetti family, or that my grandmother had known it, and deliberately kept it from the one person it hurt the most. I made myself read the agreement from the beginning. It was written in careful legal language, the kind that hid more than it explained. But piece by piece, it started to make sense. My grandmother and Aurelio Marchetti had been trying to restructure a major transaction before the collapse. The terms were incomplete, pages were missing, and whole clauses stopped halfway through a sentence.But one thing was

I made myself slow down before I let the signature become an accusation. "A name on a form doesn't prove what he did," I said, more to steady myself than to convince Julianii. "People authorize records all the time, It could mean nothing.""It could," Julianii's voice was careful, but I could hear the tension underneath it. "Except for the timing.""What timing?""Look at the date again."I picked the authorization form back up and checked it, and this time I saw what he meant. The date sat only three days after the collapse of the Marchetti family's position. Three days after everything his father had built came apart."He had access to those records at exactly the moment your family needed the evidence most," I said slowly."Yes."I sat with that for a long moment, the weight of it settling over me. Vesper hadn't stumbled onto this years later, out of idle curiosity. He had been there, in the middle of it, close enough to reach in and pull documents before anyone thought

We sat together on the floor of my father's old office, the photograph still resting between us, and I tried to hold everything I now understood at once.My father had known about the second account.He had also suspected Vesper.For years, I had needed him to be one thing or the other, completely innocent, or completely guilty. It had felt easier that way, cleaner, a version of him I could either defend without question or grieve without complication.Now I understood that the truth sat somewhere in between, and I didn't know how to hold that shape yet."He might have made mistakes," I said quietly, more to myself than to Julianii. "He might have been part of something he shouldn't have been part of, but he was also afraid of Vesper. He wrote that down, "He wanted someone to ask the question after he was gone."Julianii didn't answer right away, He was studying the photograph again, his eyes narrowed on something in the background I hadn't noticed."Look at this," he said, turning t

"Say that again," I said."Someone acting under authority connected to your grandmother's estate," Mireille repeated. "The request used an old legal authorization, Sabine. One established before she died."I sat there, the phone pressed hard against my ear, trying to make the words mean something other than what they clearly meant."She's been dead for weeks!" I said."I know.""So whoever requested my access logs isn't working for Vesper.""Not necessarily, They could be following instructions your grandmother put in place herself, long before any of this started."I lowered the phone slowly after we hung up, Julianii watching me with the same careful attention he had worn since the cabinet."She anticipated this," I said quietly. "Somehow, she anticipated that I would need to be watched.""Or protected," Julianii said."Is there a difference?"He didn't answer right away, and I appreciated that he didn't pretend to have one ready.I paced the length of the study once, twice, trying

"Paris……"What does that mean to you?"Julianii went still, not the careful stillness he wore during negotiations, but something deeper, something that reached all the way through to him."Where did you hear that?" he asked."Someone sent me a message last night. “Ask him about Paris."He was quiet for a long moment, his eyes fixed on something beyond me, somewhere in the past."Shortly before the collapse," he said finally, "my father traveled to Paris for a private meeting. I was supposed to go with him but I didn't.""Why didn't you?""I was young, I had exams, and it seemed unimportant at the time. It was like one more business trip among dozens he took every year." He rubbed the back of his neck, "although he came back different. He was frightened, though he never would have used that word himself. A few weeks later, everything collapsed.""You never knew what happened during that trip?""No. I asked him once, years later and he refused to discuss it. I let it go even if I regrett