CHAPTER 49
GAbrIEL
◆
Six months after Aurora, Helena prepared to testify against Vale by reorganizing a kitchen drawer.
She moved spoons into the knife section, knives into a ceramic jar, and three wooden utensils onto the counter. The drawer had committed no offense beyond existing near her anxiety.
I watched from the doorway.
“Do you want help?” I asked.
“No.”
“Do you want company?”
“Yes.”
I sat at the kitchen table.
That distinction had become one of the foundations of our life.
Outside, reporters waited beyond the federal boundary of the Costa Clara house. My home confinement had nine months remaining. The court had granted travel for the Vale trial, but the transport team would arrive in twenty minutes.
Helena wore a dark red suit and the engagement ring. Her testimony folder lay untouched beside my monitor charger.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked.
She moved the teaspoons again.
“That he will make himself sound reasonable.”
“He will try.”
“That people will hear grief and forgive power.”
“Some will.”
“That I will look at him and become the daughter in the archive instead of the reporter in court.”
“Both women survived him.”
She stopped moving the utensils.
“You sound like Mateus.”
“I have read his letter many times.”
“How many?”
“An answer would make me sound obsessive.”
“You are obsessive.”
“Then the answer is nineteen.”
She looked at me.
“Twenty-three,” I admitted.
A smile appeared despite the fear.
I held out my hand.
She crossed the kitchen and took it.
“Vale is going to tell one final lie,” I said. “He will say only he could hold the country together. He needs that lie because the vote proved him wrong.”
“What if the next emergency proves him right?”
“Then the republic will fail in its own name, not survive in his. Freedom includes the risk of bad collective choices.”
“That is a very inconvenient belief for a former control addict.”
“Recovery is humiliating.”
She sat in my lap carefully, though the ribs had healed months earlier.
“Do not promise me it will go well,” she said.
“It may go badly.”
“Do not promise he cannot hurt me.”
“He may.”
“Promise me something useful.”
I touched the ring on her finger.
“When you leave the witness stand, I will be where you last saw me.”
Her shoulders lowered.
“Useful,” she said.
The transport arrived.
At the federal courthouse, victims filled the public gallery. Nurse Inês sat beside Elias.
Lucia and Henrique occupied the row behind the prosecution. Sofia had press access and a notebook already open.
Vale entered without his robe.
He wore a plain prison-gray suit. Six months of detention had thinned him, but it had not reduced the expectation in his eyes that the room would rearrange itself around him.
It did not.
The charges covered financial fraud, criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, obstruction, unlawful detention, attempted murder, abuse of public authority, and the deaths linked to Order Eleven.
Dario testified first.
He admitted his own crimes in precise, ugly detail. He described how he purchased unverifiable portfolios, paid Vale’s institute, and ignored warnings because failure threatened his status.
“Justice Vale did not force me to be greedy,” he said. “He made my greed useful.”
Tomás testified under a cooperation agreement that did not erase his kidnapping or attempted transfer. He described the obsidian credentials, the leaked locations, the shell payments to his sister’s company, and Vale’s promise to save her.
“Did you believe the promise?” the prosecutor asked.
“I believed fear was evidence,” Tomás said. “Justice Vale taught me that.”
Artur testified last before Helena.
He explained the Banco Capital node and admitted he triggered the payment failure cascade under his uncle’s instruction. His voice broke only when the prosecutor asked why.
“I wanted him to say I had done something important.”
Vale watched his nephew without visible emotion.
That was the most honest thing the jury saw all morning.
During the recess, Helena stood in a side corridor with her hands flat against the stone wall.
One exit ahead. One behind. Both open.
I stayed where she could see me.
“He hasn’t looked at me yet,” she said.
“He is saving it.”
“For the stand.”
“Yes.”
She turned.
“I hate that you know him.”
“I hate the part of me that made him familiar.”
She came close and straightened my tie.
“You are not that part anymore.”
“It is still in me.”
“Then keep choosing over it.”
The bailiff called her name.
I kissed her forehead.
“Where will you be?” she asked.
I pointed to the first seat behind the prosecution table.
“Where you last saw me.”
Helena entered the courtroom.
Vale looked at her at last.
He smiled as she took the oath.