Chapter 29
I parked the car in the garage and walked slowly to the side entrance. The mansion was shrouded in a deathly silence, broken only by the constant hum of the central air conditioning.
I paused at the threshold of the main hall.
The white marble gleamed, impeccably polished, with no physical trace of the dark pool that had stained the floor on the day my mother lost her life at the foot of those stairs.
But the absence of blood did not erase the ghost. The space seemed to scream out the memories of that cursed night: Maria Rita’s desperate cries, my words laden with blind hatred, and the exact moment when I ordered her to be thrown out onto the street in the middle of the storm.
I loosened my tie, feeling the stifling air of that house suffocate me.
The contrast was unbearable. The day before, I had been in a more modest home, one that exuded the warmth of a family.
I had seen—even if only on a black-and-white ultrasound—my daughter.
My little girl was alive, growing kilometers away, surrounded by strangers who were protecting her from her own father.
I was there, surrounded by priceless works of art and cold stone walls, feeling utterly miserable.
I trudged toward my office on the ground floor, desperately needing the solitude of my four mahogany walls. However, before I could reach the doorknob, the drawling, sweet voice I least wanted to hear cut through the hallway.
“Eduardo? You’re finally here.”
I turned my face slowly. Júlia was coming down the last few steps of the side staircase.
She was wearing an impeccably tailored suit and holding a porcelain cup, moving with the arrogant familiarity of someone who already considered herself the new mistress of that territory.
Her perfume, which had previously been merely a nuisance, now turned my stomach.
“What are you doing in my house, Júlia?” I asked, my voice sounding harsh and devoid of any courtesy.
She paused, surprised by the coldness in my tone, but quickly resumed her mask of rehearsed understanding.
“I came to take care of you, dear. Lurdes told me you left without saying anything and were taking a long time. I had dinner prepared and…”
“I don’t recall giving you the key to this house, nor the right to give orders to my staff,” I cut in, taking a step toward her. The revulsion that rose in my throat was visceral.
Júlia’s gaze wavered. Her constant, controlling presence—which in recent days had masqueraded as a sympathetic shoulder during our mourning—suddenly struck me as grotesque. Why was she always there? So determined to reinforce daily, in my ears, that Maria Rita was a murderous con artist?
The suspicion—a seed planted by my conversation with Henrique and by the naked truth I saw in my wife’s eyes—took root.
“Eduardo, I’m just trying to help,” she said, her tone wounded as she attempted to defend herself. “You’re exhausted. The scandal, Eleonora’s death… and the fact that Maria Rita is still on the loose after what she did…”
“Enough,” I said in a dangerously low voice. I pointed toward the front door. “Put down the cup. Grab your things and leave, Júlia.”
“Eduardo, you’re not thinking straight…”
“I told you to leave!” My voice echoed through the hall, deep and unquestioning.
Júlia’s blue eyes widened; the insult had finally cracked her polished socialite facade. She set the cup down on the sideboard hard enough to make the china rattle, grabbed her purse, and strode stiffly toward the exit.
“Roberto!” I called over the radio mounted on the hallway wall as soon as the door closed. The head of security responded within seconds. “Effective immediately, Júlia Ferraz is strictly prohibited from entering. If she shows up at the gate, don’t let her past the guardhouse.”
“Understood, sir.”
I locked my office door from the inside and threw my jacket onto the leather sofa. I sat down at my desk and turned on the monitors of my main computer.
Physical exhaustion was begging for sleep, but my mind was racing. I wasn’t going to outsource the truth anymore. Detective Carvalho was stuck, bought off by the convenient narrative I myself had helped construct, and my own private investigators had been looking in the wrong direction.
I was the CEO of the country’s largest construction company. I analyzed complex blueprints, found flaws in structural calculations invisible to the naked eye, and anticipated market movements. It was time to use that same relentless mind to dissect my own home.
I opened the mansion’s security software and pulled up the digitized architectural blueprints.
The second-floor hallway had three cameras.
One pointed at the service staircase, one at the door to the master suite, and one sweeping the length of the hallway to the library.
However, the angle of the main camera stopped exactly three meters from the top of the white marble staircase.
There was a perfectly positioned blind spot between the wall of the east wing and the first step.
Anyone who knew the house intimately would know that a fall—or a shove—occurring in that exact square meter would not be captured on video.
Maria Rita wasn’t aware of these technical details. She had never paid attention to the camera layout. But Lurdes, the housekeeper who had managed the mansion for decades, knew about it, and Júlia, who had free access to the premises, might have known as well.
I accessed the server logs. I filtered the entry and exit times of all employees and visitors during the forty-eight hours leading up to my mother’s death.
I cross-referenced the data from the garage’s electronic turnstiles with the report from the external security firm.
I mapped out a detailed timeline. Where exactly was Lurdes at the exact moment the noise occurred?
What calls were made from the house’s landline?
The story that Maria Rita had premeditated a murder in the middle of the afternoon, without any alibi or escape route, was an insult to intelligence. Hatred had blinded me to basic logic.
I grabbed my cell phone and opened a direct encrypted channel with the construction company’s director of data intelligence.
“Marcos, I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night,” I said as soon as he answered, his voice thick with sleep.
“I want our best cyber intelligence team working right now. I want phone records unsealed, deleted messages recovered, and a complete financial trail on two people: Lurdes, my housekeeper, and Júlia Ferraz. I want to know even what they’ve bought at the bakery over the past three months. ”
“Mr. Vasconcelos? That… that requires a court order, or we’ll have to use unofficial channels…” Marcos stammered.
“Use whatever is necessary. Resources are unlimited. I’m not going to wait for the slow pace of a flawed investigation,” I declared, my blood running cold through my veins, focused on a single goal.
“My wife has been wrongfully accused, and my mother’s real killer is laughing in our faces.
I’m going to tear this apart brick by brick until I find whoever did this. ”
I hung up the phone and stared into the emptiness of the office.
The pain of regret still devoured me from within; the memory of Maria Rita and my daughter, protected from my own poison by Henrique and Aline, was an open wound.
I had no right to ask her for forgiveness.
However, I had a duty to bring the true culprits to justice.
The collapse of the lies had begun, and I would be the executioner of those who dared to manipulate my tragedy.