Chapter 16
One week.
Exactly seven days had passed since the dull thud of my mother’s body against the marble destroyed my world. Seven days since the blood spilled in the entrance hall irrevocably stained my soul, since I had condemned the woman I loved to the darkness of the streets of S?o Paulo.
Returning to the twentieth floor of the construction company’s headquarters on Avenida Paulista was supposed to be my refuge.
The Vasconcelos empire was the kingdom where I had absolute control.
There, the spreadsheets made sense, the numbers obeyed logic, and problems were solved with signatures and bank transfers.
However, on that Thursday morning, the central air conditioning in my office blew air cold enough to belong in a morgue.
I was standing with my back to the door, looking out at the city through the immense glass wall.
Traffic flowed below like clogged arteries in a metropolis indifferent to my pain.
I was wearing an impeccable, custom-tailored gunmetal-gray suit with a perfectly fitted tie.
My jaw was clenched, holding up the impenetrable mask of the billionaire CEO who does not bow to tragedy.
Yet, behind that armor, I was a man in ruins.
I turned my back on the view and walked over to my solid mahogany desk. The silence in the office was deafening. I sat down in the high-backed leather chair and let my eyes wander over the polished surface.
My gaze came to a halt.
A solid silver photo frame stood at the right edge of the desk.
The photograph captured us one late afternoon on the coast of Ceará.
I was hugging Maria Rita from behind, my chin resting on her shoulder.
Her dark hair was blowing in the sea breeze, and the smile that lit up her face was so wide, so pure and genuine, that it glowed with a light of its own.
An excruciating pang stole my breath.
For a brief instant, the doubt that had haunted me at the cemetery whispered in my ear once more. That smile couldn’t belong to a murderer. Those brown eyes, which looked at me with such adoration, couldn’t belong to a calculating monster. Where was she now? What had I done?
I clenched my hands into fists on the table, digging my nails into my palms until they almost drew blood.
No.
I couldn’t falter. If I let guilt overwhelm me, madness would take hold of me. The only way to survive that nightmare was to embrace the rage, feed it, and let it burn away any trace of compassion that still remained in me.
My mother was in the cemetery crypt. Maria Rita was the only person at the crime scene. She was covered in her blood. There was a history of hatred and a motive: money. The story was perfect. Why was I still fighting the facts to protect a ghost?
I reached out abruptly and grabbed the silver picture frame.
The cold metal burned my fingers. Without hesitation, I unlocked the back of the frame, pulled out the glossy photograph, and tossed the silver frame into the metal trash can next to my desk with a sharp clang.
I stood there holding the loose photograph. Her eyes stared back at me, frozen in time, mocking my naivety.
“My mother was always right.” My own voice sounded low, harsh, and raspy in the empty office.
Eleonora’s words, spoken during dozens of tense dinners, echoed in my mind with piercing clarity.
“You don’t understand how the world works, Eduardo.
These people… they have a hunger that you, born with a silver spoon in your mouth, will never understand.
They look at you and don’t see a man; they see a lottery ticket.
She doesn’t belong in our lives. Oil and water don’t mix.
At the first sign that the prize might slip away, her survival instinct will take over, and she’ll step over whoever she needs to. ”
I hated my mother’s prejudice. I’d argue with her, defend Maria Rita’s honor, swear that my wife was different. But at that moment, looking at the photo, the coldness of the facts crushed me.
Maria Rita never belonged to my world. Our marriage wasn’t a meeting of souls; it was a violent collision of irreconcilable realities, and my mother was the collateral damage.
I was a romantic fool who let myself be blinded by a longing for something real, and a poor girl took advantage of the opening to infiltrate my empire.
I tore the photograph in half. The sound of the photo paper tearing was like a small snap in the silence of the room. I put the two halves together and tore it again… and again. Until Maria Rita’s radiant smile had turned into dozens of unrecognizable confetti pieces.
I opened the drawer of my desk and tossed the pieces inside, slamming it shut.
Then I picked up my cell phone. I unlocked the screen, which displayed a photo of her in her wedding dress, and changed the wallpaper to the construction company’s cold, geometric logo.
I opened the gallery and, with the precision of a surgeon removing a tumor, selected the folder containing photos from the last two years. I pressed “delete all.”
It was like erasing two years of my own existence in three seconds.
I needed to purge her from my life and turn Maria into a nothing—a misstep I would correct with the same efficiency with which I dealt with flawed contracts and treacherous partners.
The soft beep from the intercom broke my somber trance.
I steadied myself, straightening my posture and adjusting my facial expression before pressing the button.
“Yes, Clara.”
“Mr. Vasconcelos, please forgive me for interrupting,” my secretary’s voice sounded tense, aware that she was treading on thin ice. “Mr. Ferraz is on line two. He said the matter is urgent and confidential, regarding the progress of the police investigation.”
The name of my chief attorney made my muscles tense.
“Put me through.”
The electronic click sounded, and I brought the receiver to my ear.
“Ferraz. What do we have?” I got straight to the point, my voice icy.
“Eduardo.” Ferraz cleared his throat on the other end of the line, his tone measured and cautious. “I just came out of an off-the-record meeting with Detective Carvalho. The forensic team has completed its report on the scene where Dona Eleonora fell.”
I held my breath.
“And what was the conclusion?”
“The report indicates that the force of the impact and the angle of the fall are inconsistent with a simple stumble or fainting spell. The marks on the heels of the victim’s shoes indicate that there was a propulsive force.
In other words, Eduardo… she was pushed.
The case has been reclassified. The investigation is now officially a case of intentional homicide. ”
My heart hammered against my ribs. Although I’d already expected this, hearing the forensic confirmation that my mother had been murdered was like being punched in the stomach.
“What about the arrest warrant?” I asked, the words coming out drawn out, venomous.
“Detective Carvalho filed a request for pretrial detention this morning, citing Maria Rita’s lack of an alibi, the housekeeper’s testimony, and the fact that she was alone with the victim, covered in her blood. The judge could rule on it by the end of the day.”
There was a moment of silence on the line. I stared at the trash can where the silver picture frame lay.
“There’s a problem, Eduardo,” Ferraz continued, his voice dropping a notch. “The police went to the mansion looking for her last night and again this morning. Your head of security, Roberto, told the officers that you kicked her out of the house on the day of the incident.”
“And I did,” I retorted sharply. “I wasn’t going to sleep under the same roof as my mother’s murderer.”
“I understand your emotional state, Eduardo. But from a legal and investigative standpoint, her disappearance complicates matters. Carvalho tried to track her credit cards, bank accounts, and Social Security number. Nothing. Zero activity. She seems to have vanished into thin air.”
A dry, bitter laugh, devoid of humor, escaped my lips. Vanished. Of course there were no transactions. She left the mansion with only the clothes on her back, in a torrential downpour. She had no cards. Her money was my money.
“Carvalho thinks she ran away, Eduardo. He believes she may have had outside help to leave the state of S?o Paulo. If she isn’t located within the next forty-eight hours, she’ll be declared a fugitive from justice.”
Fugitive…
The word echoed in my mind, sealing the coffin of my doubts once and for all.
If she were innocent, she would have sought a pro bono lawyer.
She would have gone to the police to give a formal statement to try to clear her name.
She would have fought. But she ran away.
She vanished off the map, confirming everything my mother had always said.
She was a con artist who realized the house of cards had come crashing down and slipped out the back door.
The relief at not having to deal with her crying in front of me mingled with a seething rage. She wasn’t going to get away with it.
“Listen carefully, Ferraz,” I said, rising from my chair, my voice low, controlled, and lethal. “I don’t care if the judge signs that warrant today or tomorrow. I’m not going to wait for the government’s pointless red tape.”
“Eduardo, what are you planning to do? Don’t try to interfere…”
“You’re going to contact the best private investigators in the country. Hire whoever you need to. Intelligence agencies, former police officers, trackers. I don’t care what it costs.”
“Eduardo, the police are already conducting searches…”
“The police are slow, bureaucratic, and inefficient!” I raged, slamming my palm against the desk.
“I want that woman found, and I want her face on the desk of every private investigator from S?o Paulo to the borders of this country. If she’s hiding in a hole in the Northeast or in a slum on the outskirts, I want to know.
And I want to be the first person informed when they find her—even before Detective Carvalho. Understood?”
Ferraz sighed heavily. He knew that tone of mine. It was the tone I used to crush the competition.
“Understood, Eduardo. I’ll get the team moving right away.”
“Great!”
I hung up the phone and slammed it down on the desk.
I walked to the office door and flung it open with a sharp tug. Clara, my secretary, jumped in her chair, startled by my sudden appearance.
“Clara,” I called, my tone leaving no room for any reply. “Call the mansion. Speak to Lurdes. Tell her to go up to the closet in my bedroom and remove absolutely everything that belonged to that woman. The clothes, the shoes, the jewelry, the hairbrushes, the perfumes. Everything.”
“And… and where should I have the things sent, Mr. Vasconcelos? To be donated?” she asked, her pen trembling over the notepad.
“No,” I said, feeling my heart harden, turning into the same marble slab where my mother had bled. “Tell Lurdes to throw everything into the property’s incinerator. Burn it until it turns to ashes. I don’t want a single trace of her existence in my house when I return tonight.”
I didn’t wait for an answer. I closed the office door, turning my back on the world outside, shutting myself away in the fortress of ice I’d just built. Maria Rita Vasconcelos was dead to me, and as far as my money and my hatred were concerned, she’d soon be dead to the rest of the world, too.