become terribly still.
‘Where are the children?’
‘With their nanny in the playroom.’
‘Please stay with them.
I need to speak to their parents.’
He walked through the marble hall and entered the garden.
Sebastian was standing beside Victoria and a group of guests, smiling as a waiter refilled their glasses.
When he saw his father, the smile vanished.
‘Dad! Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’
Gabriel stopped in front of him.
‘Bring your mother out here.’
Sebastian forced a laugh.
‘She’s resting.
She’s had a long day.’
‘Yes,’ Gabriel replied.
‘Washing your clothes on her knees.’
The guests fell silent.
Victoria approached with a practiced expression of concern.
‘Teresa insists on helping.
She gets bored doing nothing.’
‘Then she won’t mind if I ask her myself.’
Gabriel walked away before either of them could stop him.
He entered the laundry room and found Teresa trying to mop up the water.
When she saw him, she dropped the cloth.
‘Gabriel?’
He knelt beside her.
For a moment, neither could speak.
Then Teresa began apologizing.
‘I haven’t finished.
Sebastian said the guests need everything ready, and I—’
Gabriel took her hands gently.
‘Look at me.’
Her eyes rose to his.
‘You are my wife,’ he whispered.
‘You don’t have to earn a place in anyone’s home.’
Tears ran down her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’
‘You don’t need to apologize.’
He helped her into a chair.
‘We’re leaving.’
Teresa seized his wrist.
‘We can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Sebastian said if I left, you would lose the company.
He said the bank could take everything because of the papers I signed.’
Gabriel kept his voice calm.
‘What papers, Teresa?’
She pointed toward her apron pocket.
Inside was her phone.
She opened a photograph of a document Sebastian had ordered her to sign the previous afternoon.
The paper described a proposed guarantee connected to a multimillion-dollar construction loan.
Teresa’s name appeared near the bottom.
Beside it was a signature that purported to be Gabriel’s.
Gabriel had never signed such a guarantee.
At that moment, Sebastian appeared in the doorway.
‘Dad, this is between me and Mom.’
Gabriel rose and stood between them.
‘No.
It isn’t.’
His phone vibrated.
Lucia had sent the results of her preliminary review.
The company had paid Navarro Residential Services more than $640,000 for maintenance and equipment work that lacked supporting completion records.
Several invoices referenced construction sites where the listed equipment had never been delivered.
The records also showed authorization codes belonging to employees who had supposedly approved the payments.
One of those employees had been on medical leave when several approvals were recorded.
Lucia had attached a scanned instruction authorizing transfers from a family-controlled account, carrying what appeared to be Teresa’s signature.
Gabriel knew her handwriting intimately.
The signature was wrong.
He turned toward Sebastian.
‘How much did you steal?’
His son stared at him.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Fake invoices.
Unauthorized transfers.
And a loan guarantee using signatures neither your mother nor I knowingly authorized.’
Sebastian looked toward the hallway.
‘We need to discuss this privately.’
‘You had months to speak privately to me.
Instead, you frightened your mother into silence.’
Victoria entered behind her husband.
‘You can’t accuse us without proof.’
Gabriel lifted his phone.
‘That’s why the company’s lawyers are reviewing
