10.
LEONARDO VILLAR
I get to the café twenty minutes early.
Not because I’m anxious.
That’s what I tell myself as I choose a table in the back, where I can see both the entrance and the square through the window. I also tell myself I spent the night awake because of the audit documents, not because I replayed every detail of Manuela’s face until dawn.
I’m a poor liar when there’s no one around to convince.
Outside, the town is beginning to wake. People cross the square without hurrying. A man opens a newsstand. Two women stop to talk outside a bakery. Nothing here resembles S?o Paulo, where even silence seems to run on a schedule.
Olívia chose to live here.
She raised my daughter here.
I take out my phone and open the photograph I found on the clinic’s website. It was posted months ago during a toy drive. Olívia is crouched beside a group of children. Manuela is close to her, smiling at the camera with the same stuffed rabbit tucked against her side.
I enlarged the image so many times during the night that it has gone grainy.
Even through the pixels, the resemblance is impossible to miss.
My mouth.
The shape of my mother’s face.
Villar eyes.
A waitress approaches.
“Can I get you something?”
“Coffee.”
“We have drip, espresso, cappuccino—”
“Espresso. Double.”
She writes it down.
“Waiting for someone?”
I look toward the door.
“Yes.”
She smiles as though she knows something I don’t.
“Then maybe you should order food too. Conversations around here tend to run long.”
Before I can answer, she walks away.
Olívia comes in at exactly nine.
Jeans. Long-sleeved shirt. Crossbody bag.
Nothing of the polished elegance she was once expected to wear at my side.
Every man in the café notices her anyway.
The thought irritates me.
I have no right to it.
She spots me and walks over.
“I have forty minutes.”
She doesn’t sit until I gesture toward the chair.
The instant she notices the motion, her expression hardens.
Even basic courtesy from me can look like an order now.
I lower my hand.
Olívia sits.
“Where’s Manuela?”
“At school.”
“Which school?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I want to know.”
“You want a lot of things.”
The waitress arrives with my espresso and asks what Olívia would like.
“Chamomile tea, please.”
I remember that she never drank coffee when she was nervous.
I shouldn’t remember that.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” I say once we are alone again.
“Then you’re wasting one of your natural talents.”
“I want to understand what happened.”
“Didn’t the audit explain it?”
“Part of it.”
I take a folder from the chair beside me and place it on the table.
Olívia looks at it but doesn’t touch it.
“The money supposedly paid to you came from an account linked to the Villar Foundation,” I begin. “Henrique authorized the transfers through an intermediary company. In the falsified records, they were made to look like funds diverted into an account in your name.”
“The money went to the clinic where he was being treated.”
“I know that now.”
“And I need to sit here hearing all of this because…?”
“Because I need you to confirm what the documents still don’t explain.”
“The truth didn’t matter when I tried to tell you.”
“I know.”
That catches her off guard.
She was probably expecting an excuse.
I spent half the night preparing several.
None survived the moment I realized my daughter existed.
“When did Henrique come to you?”
“Eight months before he died.”
“Why?”
“He had started losing sensation in his hands. Then came the tremors, falls, episodes of confusion. One of the doctors raised the possibility of a degenerative disease.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he was afraid.”
“Of me?”
“All of you.”
My jaw tightens.
“I was his brother.”
“You were also acting president of the group, the face of the family, and the person he believed would be most disappointed in him.”
“I would have helped.”
“Maybe.”
“I would have.”
Olívia looks at me with a sadness I find far harder to bear than anger.
“You didn’t help the woman you said you loved when evidence appeared against her. Why would Henrique believe you’d react better to learning that he was sick and hiding something else?”
“What else?”
Her tea arrives.
She thanks the waitress, waits until she is gone, then wraps both hands around the cup.
“The illness wasn’t his only secret.”
“The paternity issue.”
“Yes.”
“He knew my father might not be his?”
“He suspected. He found letters from your mother.”
The words your mother pull my spine rigid.
“What letters?”
“Letters to a man named Augusto Meireles. Henrique didn’t know whether she ever sent them.”
The name means nothing to me.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“You saw them?”
“Once. He showed me pictures on his phone.”
“You didn’t keep copies?”
“No.”
“His phone was destroyed in the crash.”
“I know.”
“Convenient.”
I see her face change before the last syllable has even settled between us.
Same mistake.
Again.
Suspicion turning into accusation before thought has a chance to intervene.
“No,” I say. “That wasn’t—”
“It was exactly what you meant.”
“It’s a habit.”
“A terrible one.”
“I’m trying to stop.”
“Try harder.”
She takes a sip of tea.
“Henrique thought Catarina knew,” she continues. “He said she had made comments since he was a teenager. Things about him not truly belonging to the family.”
My aunt.
The woman who handed me the evidence against Olívia on my wedding day.
The woman who sat beside me through board meetings for five years and helped me consolidate control of the company after Henrique died.
“Why did he trust you?”
“Because I had worked with patients suffering from the disease his doctors suspected. And because I wasn’t a Villar.”
“You were my fiancée.”
“To Catarina, that never made me family.”
“It did to me.”
“Until it became inconvenient.”
Guilt drives itself between my ribs again.
“You met Henrique to take him to appointments.”
“Yes.”
“The photographs?”
“Taken outside clinics and outside a rented apartment where a specialist from overseas examined him privately.”
“The original messages?”
“He talked about being scared. About keeping things secret. About not knowing how to tell you. Whoever altered them cut off the messages before and after.”
“Who had access to his phone?”
“I don’t know. After Henrique died, Catarina came to my house and said she needed to collect a few things he had left with me.”
“You gave them to her?”
“A folder and a tablet.”
“His tablet?”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes.
“That was where the messages came from.”
“I assumed as much.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Catarina took it?”
“I did. In the church.”
A fragment returns.
Ask your aunt about the tablet.
At the time, I heard it as a desperate attempt to blame the woman who had exposed her betrayal.
“I didn’t listen,” I admit.
“No.”
“I was convinced.”
“You were eager to be convinced.”
That brings my eyes up.
“Why would I want to believe my fiancée was sleeping with my brother?”
“Because the alternative required you to trust me over your family.”
I don’t answer.
She is right.
Not entirely.
But enough.
The alternative also required me to face the possibility that I had failed Henrique. That he had been sick and terrified right in front of me and I had never noticed.
It was easier to make Olívia guilty than to accept that my brother died keeping secrets because he didn’t trust me.
“I’m sorry.”
She goes still.
The words sound too small.
Almost insulting.
“For what?”
It isn’t a generous question.
It’s a challenge.
“For not listening. For believing the documents. For what I said in the church.”
“That’s all?”
The list has no end.
“For sending lawyers after you. For never finding out what happened afterward. For…”
My voice fails.
I am not accustomed to apologizing.
Much less to admitting to a kind of damage that cannot be repaired with money, leverage, or a business decision.
“For rejecting Manuela.”
Olívia’s hands slip on the cup.
It doesn’t fall, but tea spills into the saucer.
“Don’t use her name to make your guilt easier to live with.”
“I’m not.”
“You met her yesterday.”
“And I should have met her five years ago.”
“Yes.”
Silence settles between us.
“I want the DNA test.”
“I agree.”
I stare at her.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said I agree. At a clinic I choose. No press. No publicists. No Villar employees. The result goes only to the two of us.”
“All right.”
“And you tell no one until we’ve talked.”
“My lawyers need—”
“Then there is no test.”
“I can’t keep it secret indefinitely.”
“I didn’t ask you to. I asked for enough time to explain this to my daughter before your family discovers she exists and turns her into a corporate asset.”
My body stiffens.
“What do you know about what’s happening with the group?”
“Nothing beyond what anyone can read in the papers. But I know the Villars well enough to understand that a daughter of yours will have value to people who will never care about her.”
I think of my grandfather’s will.
The clause the legal team began discussing again once the audit reopened old files.
The shareholder meeting four months from now.
The way Catarina would use any instability in my life to expand her influence on the board.
Olívia doesn’t know the details.
She is still right.
“I need to know about her health.”
Her expression closes.
“After the test.”
“There may be relevant medical history on my side of the family.”
“I already gave her doctors everything I knew.”
“You don’t know everything.”
“Then give me whatever matters.”
“I want to speak with her doctor.”
“No.”
“I’m her father.”
“There is no result yet.”
“You know I am.”
“And you still need a piece of paper.”
“Olívia—”
“After the test,” she says again. “And only if her cardiologist thinks it’s necessary.”
The word confirms what I feared.
“Cardiologist.”
She realizes the mistake.
“What does Manuela have?”
“This is not the conversation we’re having right now.”
“What does she have?”
Olívia’s jaw tightens.
“A congenital heart defect.”
Everything around us recedes.
“What kind?”
“A ventricular septal defect associated with a valve abnormality. She had a procedure as a baby and has been monitored ever since.”
“Surgery?”
“Therapeutic catheterization.”
“How old was she?”
“Eight months.”
I was in London when Manuela was eight months old.
I remember because I spent three weeks negotiating the acquisition of a laboratory network.
The night we signed, I drank champagne in a penthouse overlooking the Thames.
My daughter was in a procedure room.
“Were there complications?”
“Not from that procedure.”
“From that one?”
Her mouth tightens.
“The valve has progressively deteriorated. Her doctors are monitoring her to determine when surgery becomes necessary.”
“She needs surgery?”
“Probably.”
“When?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Who treats her?”
“Dr. Rafael Torres in Belo Horizonte.”
I know the name.
Good pediatric cardiologist.
Not the best.
“I want the scans.”
“I already said—”
“The Villar Institute has one of the strongest congenital cardiology programs in the country. The head of pediatric cardiac surgery spent twelve years operating on cases like hers in Boston.”
“I am not handing my daughter over to your family.”
“The hospital is not my family.”
“It carries your name.”
“And it has resources that could help her.”
She stands.
“We’re done.”
“Sit down.”
“Do not order me around.”
I stand too.
Several people glance our way.
I lower my voice.
“I’m not trying to control you. I’m saying that if there is any chance Manuela may need surgery, I want her evaluated by the best team available.”
“She already has a cardiologist.”
“One who doesn’t have her complete genetic history.”
“You know nothing about her treatment.”
“Exactly. I’m trying to.”
“You had five years to care.”
“Five years ago, I was an idiot.”
That stops her.
Olívia stares at me.
“That doesn’t begin to cover what you did.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Then tell me.”
“I don’t have time to educate you on the consequences of your cruelty.”
“But you do have a daughter who may benefit from what I can provide.”
I regret the words before I finish saying them.
Her face goes completely blank.
“There you are.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“The man who thinks money turns absence into rights.”
“I’m not trying to buy anything.”
“You are using her treatment to force open a door I haven’t decided you deserve to walk through.”
“I’m saying I can help.”
“Manuela is not a debt you get to repay so you can feel less guilty.”
She grabs her bag.
I catch her wrist before she can step away.
Her gaze drops to my hand.
I release her immediately.
“We’ll do the test,” she says. “After that, we talk about what comes next. Until then, you stay away from her.”
“I want to see her.”
“No.”
“Not even at the test?”
“You’ll be in the room to give your sample. She’ll stay with me.”
“I want her to know who I am before then.”
“No.”
“She has questions.”
Pain flashes across Olívia’s face.
“I know.”
“We can’t lie to her.”
“Do not lecture me about lying.”
“I don’t want her learning from someone else.”
“Neither do I. That is why I need a few days.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
“The test can be done tomorrow.”
“Three days, Leonardo.”
I want to refuse.
I want to tell her I have already lost too much time.
But I wasn’t the one who carried Manuela.
I wasn’t beside her in every hospital.
I wasn’t the one answering questions about a father who never came.
“Three days.”
“I’ll send you the clinic address.”
“I want copies of her cardiac records.”
“After the result.”
“And I want to know immediately if there’s any emergency.”
“You didn’t have that privilege yesterday.”
“Yesterday, I didn’t know she existed.”
Olívia looks away.
“To Manuela, you still don’t.”
She leaves before I can answer.
I remain standing beside the table beneath the discreet stares of half the town.
My phone vibrates.
Marcelo.
Catarina called an emergency board meeting for tomorrow. The audit leaked. We need you back in S?o Paulo.
I read it twice.
Then I look out the window.
Olívia is crossing the square without looking back.
Any other time, I would already be arranging a flight.
For the first time in my life, the Villar empire is not the most important crisis in front of me.