Chapter 32
The red light on the digital recorder flashed rhythmically on the glass top of my desk, the sole witness to the moral collapse unfolding inside my office.
Lurdes remained huddled on the Persian rug, sobbing uncontrollably, her forehead pressed against the floor, waiting for me to pronounce her sentence.
“I asked for a name, Lurdes,” I repeated, my voice sounding so cold and sharp that the air around us froze. I took a step toward her. “Who paid for my mother’s life?”
She raised her face, streaked with tears and terror. Her thin lips trembled violently before the betrayal took shape in the silence of the room.
“It was Ms. Ferraz… Júlia Ferraz,” the housekeeper whispered, her voice shrill. “She came to me. She knew about the loan sharks. She said she’d solve my problem if I solved hers.”
The name hit my stomach like a block of lead, but the surprise lasted only a fraction of a second, quickly swallowed up by a dark, volcanic hatred.
Júlia…
The perfect heiress, the comforting friend, the woman who stroked my shoulders at the wake and whispered in my ear that Maria Rita was a fraud.
A grotesque scene played out in my mind: Júlia crying fake tears, using my grief as a stepping stone to infiltrate my home and try to reclaim the place she’d always believed was rightfully hers.
“Why did Júlia want my mother dead?” I demanded, the CEO’s analytical mind taking full control over the emotions of the grieving son.
“I don’t know everything, Mr. Vasconcelos, I swear!
” Lurdes pleaded. “Ms. Ferraz only told me that Dona Eleonora was going to ruin her life… that she was going to expose a secret to society. She said her mother was blinded by hatred for Mrs. Vasconcelos and that no one would ever suspect an ‘accident’ during a fight between a daughter-in-law and her mother-in-law.”
I motioned sharply for Lurdes to shut up. I locked her in the adjoining office with two trusted security guards at the door, cutting her off from the world.
I walked over to the computer and called Marcos, my director of intelligence, on the encrypted line.
“Marcos, shift your focus. I want a complete sweep of the personal audits my mother has commissioned over the past six months. Look for any financial connection between the construction company’s joint accounts and the Ferraz family’s bank. Find the leak.”
In less than an hour, the response arrived. And it was shocking.
My mother wasn’t just focused on destroying my marriage.
Eleonora Vasconcelos, with her relentless business acumen, had uncovered a complex, web of embezzlement and corporate fraud.
Júlia was siphoning off millions from investment funds that linked our families, covering up her own addiction to high-risk transactions that had secretly depleted her personal reserves.
My mother had the evidence. She was going to expose Júlia, ruin the Muniz family’s reputation, and send her to jail.
Cornered, Júlia used Eleonora’s hatred for Maria Rita as the perfect smokescreen for the murder.
I clenched my fists until my fingernails dug into my palms. I wasn’t just going to turn her in to the police.
Júlia Muniz had played God with my family.
She had destroyed my mother and manipulated me into throwing my wife and daughter out onto the street.
I was going to annihilate her on the very ground where she thought she was untouchable.
The following night, I sent a direct message to Júlia, asking her to meet me in my office at the construction company’s headquarters after work. The instruction was clear:
“I need your help. I’ve got the final piece of evidence to arrest Maria Rita.”
She took the bait hook, line, and sinker.
When the double doors to my office on the twentieth floor swung open, Júlia walked in, looking stunning.
She wore an impeccably tailored red dress, her blonde hair perfectly brushed, exuding that sweet, poisonous perfume.
She smiled—a predatory smile of someone who thought she had finally won the war and claimed the crown.
“Eduardo, darling,” she purred, walking over to the office bar and pouring two glasses of whiskey. She approached my desk and slid one of the glasses toward me. “I came as soon as I read your message. Did you finally find her?”
I leaned against the edge of the desk, arms crossed, my expression neutral. My cell phone lay on the glass with the voice recorder running and uploading directly to a secure cloud folder shared with Detective Carvalho and Henrique, who were waiting in the conference room next door.
“The police have cornered her,” I lied in a cold, magnetic voice. “But I needed you here, Júlia. You’ve always been by my side. You’ve always understood how our world works.”
Júlia took a step closer, placing her free hand on my chest, her fingers tracing the lapel of my jacket.
“I’ve always been here for you, Eduardo. Your mother knew that we belonged together. She knew Maria Rita was a mistake. Now that trash is out of our way, we can heal this wound. I can be the woman this family needs—the matriarch your mother would have wanted me to be.”
I smiled. It was an icy smile, devoid of any soul.
“My mother was truly a brilliant woman, Júlia. So brilliant that, last night, my auditors finished analyzing the encrypted files from her personal safe.”
I felt Júlia’s hand freeze against my chest. Her blue eyes wavered for a fraction of a second.
“Files?”
“Yes. A complete dossier.” I stepped away from her, walking around the table, leaving her standing alone in the center of the room.
“Hundreds of pages detailing how you embezzled forty million reais from the joint high-risk accounts. Documents proving that my mother was going to turn you in to the Federal Police the very same week she—by a terrible coincidence—fell down those stairs.”
The crystal of the glass trembled in Júlia’s hand. The mask of seduction slipped, revealing raw panic.
“Eduardo… this is absurd. These files must be fake; Maria Rita must have planted them…”
“Maria Rita barely knew the difference between a real estate fund and a savings account,” I retorted, my voice rising in volume, filling the room with my authority. “Don’t try to insult my intelligence, Júlia. Lurdes confessed.”
The whiskey glass slipped from Júlia’s fingers, shattering against the fine hardwood floor. The golden liquid spread like blood. She recoiled, her breathing rapid and her face contorted by impending defeat.
“She was going to destroy me, Eduardo!” Júlia screamed, her voice cracking with hysteria as her arrogance gave way to madness. “Eleonora was going to throw me in jail and ruin my father’s name! I begged her, but she was a sadist! She said I was a fraud!”
I closed in on her, lethal, psychologically cornering her until there was nowhere left to hide.
“So you paid Lurdes to kill her and framed my wife.”
“Your wife was the perfect target!” Júlia spat, her eyes bloodshot with rage.
“Your mother hated that wretched woman from the Northeast! I just combined business with pleasure! You hated her deep down, too, Eduardo! You didn’t hesitate to throw her out on the street, did you?
! We’re the same! We do whatever it takes to keep our empire clean! ”
The disgust I felt in that moment was the most intense I had ever experienced. Not because of her, but because of myself—for allowing that kind of vermin to walk freely through my house.
“We’re not the same,” I said in a dangerously calm tone. I pressed a button under my desk. “You’re the scum I just exterminated.”
The office’s double doors burst open. Detective Carvalho entered, accompanied by three uniformed police officers and Henrique Ferraz.
Júlia’s eyes widened as she spun around, panic choking off any words she tried to form. She looked at me, holding out a trembling hand.
“Eduardo… please…”
“Júlia Ferraz, you are under arrest on suspicion of aggravated homicide and financial fraud,” Detective Carvalho declared, pulling out the handcuffs.
I didn’t look away as the cold metal clamped down on the wrists of the woman who had orchestrated the hell of my life. I watched with cold clinical detachment as the police dragged her out of my office; her hysterical cries of protest echoed down the hallway until they faded away in the elevator.
I rested both hands on the desk and closed my eyes. The collapse of the lies was complete. I had handed over the culprits and cleared Maria Rita’s name. The empire was secure.
However, in the silence that returned to the room, the only thing I felt was an excruciating chill, for true justice would not bring back what I had broken. My wife and daughter remained far away, and the greatest prison was not Júlia’s, but the one I myself had built around my own heart.