Chapter 4: The Message From Nowhere
I turned the phone so Julian could see the screen.
He read it.
His jaw tightened by a fraction.
"Do you know that number?" I asked.
"No."
"Should I be worried?"
"Yes," he said, without hesitation.
He reached across and picked up my phone.
"May I?"
I nodded.
He photographed the screen with his own phone, then set mine back down.
"I'll have it traced.
Don't respond."
"Someone is watching us," I said.
"Or watching me."
"Possibly both." He stood.
"I need to make a call.
Give me ten minutes."
He moved to the far side of the office and spoke quietly into his phone.
I couldn't hear the words.
I looked at the photograph still lying on the desk — the hospital corridor, the woman in the green coat, the man on the floor — and tried to reconcile that frozen moment with the composed, calculating person standing fifteen feet away from me now.
Julian came back.
"The number is registered to a prepaid carrier.
It was activated four days ago."
"Four days ago," I repeated.
"The day after the engagement party."
"Yes."
"So someone saw what happened on the terrace and decided to get involved."
"Or someone already knew what was going to happen," Julian said, "and had been waiting."
That landed differently than I expected.
I looked at him.
"You think this was planned.
The party.
Mateo and Selina.
All of it."
"I think Mateo is not as impulsive as he appeared that night," Julian said carefully.
"A man who cheats at his own engagement party, in a corridor adjacent to the main hall, during his father's toast, is either catastrophically careless or he wanted to be found."
I thought about the corridor.
The way it had been dimly lit but not dark.
The terrace door left slightly open.
The fact that Mateo had glanced up almost immediately when I pulled back from Julian — as though he had already been watching the terrace, not the woman he was kissing.
"He wanted me to walk away," I said.
"He needed you to," Julian said.
"Without a formal break, the Arriaga family could contest any restructuring of the merger terms.
But if you ended the engagement — publicly, dramatically, in front of witnesses — the Vances could claim breach of social contract and use it to renegotiate the financial terms entirely in their favor."
"My father would never agree to that."
"Your father wouldn't have a choice.
The original merger agreement has a clause — I've read it — that voids the equity-sharing structure if the engagement is dissolved by the Arriaga party." He paused.
"Your family loses the controlling stake.
The Vances absorb it."
The air went out of the room.
"My mother doesn't know about that clause," I said.
"She would have told me."
"Your father knows," Julian said.
"I believe he has known for some time."
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was my father's name on the screen.
I stared at it through two full rings.
"Answer it," Julian said quietly.
I picked up.
"Dad."
"Daniela." His voice was careful.
Measured in a way that told me he had rehearsed this.
"I need you to come home this evening.
There are things I should have told you before all of this began."
"What things?"
A pause.
Long enough that I could hear him breathing.
"About the agreement," he said.
"And about what the Vances have been holding over us for the past three years."
I looked at Julian across the desk.
He hadn't moved.
"I'll be there at seven," I said, and ended the call.
"Your father is going to tell you something tonight that will make you want to end this arrangement with me," Julian said.
It wasn't a question.
"You already know what he's going to say."
"I know part of it." He met my eyes.
"Whatever he tells you — hear all of it before you decide anything."
"And if what he tells me changes things?"
Julian was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Then we'll have a different conversation tomorrow."
I picked up my bag.
At the door, I stopped.
"Elena Voss," I said.
"Where is she now?"
Julian's answer came without hesitation, and it was the last thing I expected.
May you like
"Sitting in the office directly below this one," he said.
"She has been working with me for the past eight months."
