Chapter 4
I did not sleep.
Neither did Leo.
He curled beside me in my study while Marco and Sofia brought evidence piece by piece.
Camera footage.
Gate logs.
Old household schedules.
Staff payments.
Javier’s travel records.
Every hour built a darker shape.
Javier had been alone with Leo seventeen times in six months.
Seventeen.
I had trusted him because he was my cousin.
Because my father had trusted him.
Because grief had made me blind.
At three in the morning, Marco entered with a laptop.
“You need to see this.”
The screen showed the west hallway two weeks earlier.
Leo stood near the greenhouse door.
Javier grabbed his shoulder.
The audio was faint, but clear.
“You want your father to die like your mother?” Javier hissed.
Leo froze.
My hand tightened around the armrest until the wood cracked.
Sofia whispered, “Dante.”
Marco played another clip.
Javier speaking on the phone near the pool.
“The boy is soft. Once Dante signs guardianship papers for training abroad, we control the heir.”
Training abroad.
Guardianship papers.
I knew exactly what he meant.
There was a private academy in Switzerland where wealthy families sent sons to become polished, obedient, and far away.
Javier had been pushing it for months.
I had almost agreed.
My stomach turned.
“He wanted Leo out of the country,” I said.
Marco nodded.
“And you isolated.”
“Who was on the phone?”
“We’re tracing it.”
Sofia placed Elena’s notebook on the desk.
“There’s more.”
I opened it carefully.
Elena had written names.
Dates.
Payments.
Meetings.
At the center of it all was one word.
Succession.
My father’s organization had never accepted Elena fully.
She was an outsider.
Too honest.
Too loved by me.
Too protective of Leo.
And now I saw it.
Her death had not ended a threat.
It had cleared a path.
I looked at my sleeping son.
Then at my sister.
“Wake the lawyer.”
Sofia frowned.
“Which one?”
“Not the family lawyer,” I said.
“Why?”
May you like
I turned the notebook around.
Elena had circled his name in red.
