Chapter 3: What the Folder Contained
I looked at Isabella for one moment.
"Go with Rosa," I said.
"Stay in the kitchen.
I'll be right there."
Rosa stepped forward immediately and took Isabella's hand.
My daughter looked up at me with those careful eyes — the ones that had learned not to expect too much.
Then she let Rosa lead her away.
The kitchen door closed.
Beatriz and I were alone in the hallway.
She had recovered some of her composure.
Her chin was up.
Her shoulders were back.
She was watching me the way she always watched difficult situations — calculating how much damage had been done and how much she could still control.
"Whatever Isabella told you," she said, "she's a child.
Children exaggerate."
"She told me about a folder."
Something moved behind Beatriz's eyes.
Gone in an instant.
"She doesn't know what she's talking about."
"Then you won't mind if I look."
I walked toward the stairs.
She moved to block me.
Not aggressively — just a half-step, a hand raised slightly, the way someone moves when they want to appear calm but need to stop something from happening.
"This is my home too," she said.
"You don't just go through my private things."
"Our home," I said.
"And our daughter just told me you threatened to use a folder against me if I ever found out what you'd been doing to her."
"That is not what happened."
"Then what happened?"
Her jaw tightened.
"I was keeping records.
For my own protection.
Any smart woman in my position would do the same."
"Protection from what?"
She didn't answer.
I went up the stairs.
She followed, her heels sharp on each step behind me.
I walked down the upper hallway to the room she used as a private dressing room — the one she had always kept locked when I was home, the one she called her space and I had never questioned.
The door was unlocked now.
She must have forgotten in the chaos of coming downstairs.
I pushed it open.
The room smelled of her perfume.
A dressing table along one wall, a wardrobe along another.
On the small writing desk in the corner sat a manila folder, thick with papers, held shut with an elastic band.
I picked it up.
"Don't." Her voice came from the doorway.
Sharp for the first time.
"Those are private documents."
I removed the elastic band.
The first page was a printed email chain.
The sender was a name I didn't recognize — Marcos Vidal.
The recipient was Beatriz.
The dates ran back fourteen months.
I read the first three lines and felt the floor shift slightly beneath me.
The emails were not about my company.
They were about my company's competitor.
A rival developer named Serrano Group, who had been trying to acquire two of my coastal properties through a proxy buyer for the past year.
I had known about the acquisition attempts.
What I had not known was that someone had been feeding Serrano Group detailed information about my negotiating positions, my financing terms, and my legal vulnerabilities on both properties.
The emails made clear who that someone was.
I turned to the next page.
Then the next.
Beatriz had been passing confidential information from my company to Serrano Group for over a year.
The folder contained printed copies of documents that could only have come from my own files — internal valuations, draft contracts, private correspondence with my legal team.
I looked up.
She was still in the doorway.
Her arms were crossed.
Her expression had gone completely flat.
"How did you get these documents?" I asked.
"That's not the question you should be asking."
"It is exactly the question I'm asking."
She walked into the room and sat down on the edge of the dressing table chair.
Unhurried.
As if we were discussing a household expense.
"You travel for months at a time," she said.
"You leave me here.
You leave Isabella here.
You think I don't notice that your company is the center of your life and we are the decoration?"
"That does not answer my question."
"I made connections," she said.
"I protected myself.
Because I knew that one day you would decide you were done with this marriage, and I would need something to negotiate with."
"You leaked confidential business information to my direct competitor."
"I shared some documents.
Nothing that caused you real harm."
I set the folder down on the desk.
"Serrano Group used my negotiating position on the Málaga property to undercut me by exactly the margin I had told my lawyer was my floor.
I lost that deal.
Twelve million euros."
Her expression didn't change.
"Beatriz.
That deal took two years to build."
"You built another one."
The steadiness of her voice was more disturbing than anger would have been.
She wasn't defending herself.
She wasn't afraid.
She was sitting in front of me with the calm of someone who believed she still held enough cards to walk away from this table intact.
"Who is Marcos Vidal?" I asked.
A pause.
Brief, but real.
"A contact."
"A contact at Serrano Group?"
"A contact who understood my situation."
I looked at her.
At the careful way she had chosen that word.
Understood.
"Are you involved with him?"
She met my eyes.
"That's a separate conversation."
The room was very quiet.
I picked up the folder, tucked it under my arm, and walked toward the door.
"Where are you going with that?" she said.
"Downstairs."
"Those are my documents."
I stopped in the doorway and turned back.
"They're copies of my company's confidential files.
Which means they belong to my company's legal team."
Her composure cracked.
Just slightly.
A tightening around the eyes.
"If you take that folder," she said, "I will make things very difficult for you.
I know things about how your company operates that your board does not know.
I know about the Seville arrangement.
I know about the offshore account your father set up before he transferred the company to you."
I had not heard anyone mention the Seville arrangement in four years.
My hand tightened on the folder.
"Think carefully," she said.
"Before you decide this is a war you want to fight."
I looked at her for a long moment.
Then I walked out of the room.
Downstairs, Rosa had cleaned Isabella's hands and wrapped them in soft bandages.
Isabella was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of warm milk, both hands resting carefully on the surface.
She looked up when I came in.
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
I sat down beside her.
I put the folder on the chair next to me, out of her sight.
"Everything is going to be okay," I said.
She studied my face the way children do when they're trying to decide whether an adult is telling the truth.
Then she leaned her head against my arm.
Rosa caught my eye over Isabella's head.
She glanced at the ceiling — toward the room upstairs — and then back at me.
Her expression asked a question she didn't say out loud.
I gave her a small nod.
She understood.
She reached into her apron pocket and set her phone quietly on the counter, screen up, already open to her recent calls.
The most recent call was to a number I didn't recognize.
The timestamp was three months ago.
The duration was four minutes and thirty-one seconds.
Beside the number, Rosa had typed a name in her contacts.
*Inspector Delgado — Policía Nacional.*
She had tried.
Three months ago, she had tried.
I reached across and turned the phone face-down.
I would ask her about that call later.
Tonight, I needed to think.
Beatriz's heels crossed the floor above us.
Moving toward the bedroom.
The sound stopped.
May you like
Then I heard something I had not expected.
The quiet, unmistakable sound of a suitcase being pulled from a shelf.
