Chapter 21
Control had always been the foundation upon which I built my family’s empire.
Throughout my life, I had been trained to anticipate crises, manipulate the market, and silence problems before they ever made the headlines.
But that morning, sitting behind my desk on the twentieth floor of the Vasconcelos Building, I felt that control had slipped through my fingers like fine sand.
I flung the tablet onto the glass desk with a dull thud, rubbing my eyes, which were burning with exhaustion.
The scandal surrounding Eleonora Vasconcelos’s death was demanding every ounce of influence and every million reais I possessed to keep it from becoming the main circus in the national media.
I had spent the last forty-eight hours in endless meetings with my public relations team and the country’s top lawyers.
We were buying the silence of editors, threatening gossip websites with million-real defamation lawsuits, and issuing sterile formal statements calling for “respect for the family’s grief. ”
However, the vultures continued to circle. Maria Rita’s name was being leaked on anonymous forums. The “mysterious wife who disappeared.”
The intercom rang, and I answered on speakerphone.
“Eduardo,” Henrique Ferraz’s voice sounded metallic and cautious on the other end of the line. “I just got out of another meeting with Detective Carvalho.”
“So?” I asked, my voice hoarse, my jaw clenched. “What’s new?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem—or the solution, depending on how you look at it.
” Ferraz sighed. “The forensic analysis of the staircase is inconclusive. Yes, the angle of the fall was violent, but without an indoor security camera pointed at that hallway, there’s no way to physically prove whether she was pushed or if your mother simply tripped over her own heel during a heated argument. ”
I clenched my fists on the table, the knuckles turning white.
“What about Maria Rita?”
“She remains the sole and primary suspect in the investigation. Lurdes’s testimony was damning regarding the hatred between the two, and the fact that Maria Rita was covered in blood next to the body weighs heavily against her.
But… Carvalho admitted off the record that, without a confession and without physical evidence of assault, a good defense attorney would tear this case apart in court in five minutes.
The investigation is stalling, Eduardo.”
Silence reigned in my office.
“What about the search for her?” I asked, my voice faltering just a bit, betraying the icy facade I was trying to maintain.
“No leads, Eduardo. It’s as if she’s vanished into thin air. The highway patrol and our private investigators haven’t found a single trace. No bank transactions, no record of her ID being used.”
“Keep looking, Ferraz. I don’t pay you to lead me down dead ends.” I hung up abruptly, cutting off the call.
I leaned my head back against the leather chair and closed my eyes. The headache pounding in my temples was excruciating.
My office door opened with a soft click. The scent of a French perfume—sweet, floral, and meticulously calculated—filled the air-conditioned room even before I heard the sound of her heels.
Júlia.
She wore a perfectly fitted little black dress and an understanding smile that appeared rehearsed in front of a mirror.
She walked over to the small bar in the corner of my office, poured two fingers of Scotch whiskey into a crystal glass, and brought it to me, circling the desk with the confidence of someone who felt right at home.
“You need to relax your shoulders, Eduardo,” she murmured, setting the glass down in front of me. Her hands, with perfectly manicured nails, rested on my tense shoulders, beginning to massage the stiff muscles. “You’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“It’s my job to carry this world, Júlia,” I replied curtly, without touching the glass of whiskey.
“I know. You’ve always been the pillar of support for all of us.
But don’t let your anger toward that woman ruin your health.
” She leaned in, bringing her face close to my ear, delivering her venom with surgical precision.
“The police will find her, dear, and justice will be served. What she did to your mother… and to you. She fooled all of us with that innocent small-town face.”
Júlia’s hands continued to massage my shoulders, but instead of comfort, her touch made me feel subtly suffocated.
I listened to her words and the logic that everyone around me was trying to hammer into my head. Maria Rita was a con artist and a murderer. She was the mistake that cost my mother her life. Yet, deep down in my dark soul, where Júlia’s voice couldn’t reach, chaos reigned supreme.
If Maria Rita was such a cold and calculating murderer, why couldn’t my detectives find any secret bank accounts? Why hadn’t she fled with jewelry or money?
The image of the night I kicked her out crashed into my mind with the force of a runaway train. The light-colored, torn dress. The blood staining her skin. Her brown eyes, once so full of adoration, wide with a raw, primal terror, as raindrops washed over her face.
“I have nowhere to go! I’ll freeze to death on the street!”
The echo of her scream reverberated in my ears.
“Eduardo? Are you listening to me?” Júlia asked, stopping the massage.
“Yes. I am…” I murmured, pulling away from her touch and standing up from the chair.
I walked over to the office’s enormous glass wall. The sky over S?o Paulo was heavy, covered by gray clouds that threatened yet another late-afternoon storm. The wind was lashing the trees below, and the temperature had plummeted dramatically.
I crossed my arms over my chest, my heart beating erratically.
Where was she?
The question devoured me from within. More than a week had already passed.
I had cast her into the darkness of a ruthless metropolis, without a coat, without a cell phone to call for help, and without a single cent in her pocket.
The businessman inside me said she was smart, that she must have found a way, or that she had accomplices.
But the man who slept in her arms and who heard the erratic beating of her heart on our wedding day knew, with a heart-wrenching intuition, that Maria Rita knew nothing beyond what I had shown her.
Was Maria cold? Was it possible she was starving, sitting on some dirty sidewalk, huddled amid the trash of this city that shows no mercy to the weak?
The panic that Maria might be suffering abuse, that she might be in real, physical danger, suddenly overpowered the anger I’d been forcing myself to feel.
I blamed her for my mother’s death… I needed her to be the one to blame. Yet the uncertainty was beginning to gnaw away at my sanity. What if she were telling the truth? What if I had cast the only woman who truly loved me out to die on the streets of S?o Paulo?
“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?” Júlia’s voice sounded behind me, laced with barely concealed jealousy.
I turned my face slowly, staring at the woman who embodied the high society my mother had always idolized: polished, perfect, and cold.
“I’m thinking about how my life has turned into a living hell,” I replied, overcome by utter exhaustion. “You can go, Júlia. I need to be alone.”
She hesitated, but didn’t dare challenge me. She grabbed her designer purse and left, closing the door carefully.
I was left alone with the view of the gray city.
I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling a chill that didn’t come from the air conditioning, but from the terrifying realization that was beginning to take shape in my mind: Maria Rita’s silence and disappearance didn’t seem like the escape of a cunning criminal, but rather of someone who had been swallowed up by an abyss that I myself had dug.