Chapter 6 - The Shadows of the Past
Daniel slammed the door behind him, striding out of the precinct into the cold night air, but Rebeca’s words echoed relentlessly in his brain like a psychological trap.
“Ask yourself why Sofia looks nothing like you...”
He knew it was a lie. He had known Sofia was his from the moment she was born—the brown eyes, the stubborn cowlick in her hair, the way she hummed when she drew pictures. It was classic psychological warfare designed to make him doubt his own reality. Yet, the seed of paranoia had already been planted.
When Daniel arrived back at the mansion, the house was dark and dead silent. He didn't go to his bedroom. Instead, he walked past the children's room, seeing Mateo and Sofia sleeping peacefully through the crack in the door, and headed straight back down to the study.
He needed to check the rest of Elena's encrypted folder. If Rebeca had claimed Elena was running away from him, there had to be more files, more logs, or financial records that either proved or disproved the accusation.
Daniel unlocked the hidden partition once more. He scrolled past the legal documents straight into Elena’s personal journal entries—digital text files encrypted with her private passkey.
He began to read.
October 12: “Daniel has been working late again. The merger is stressing him out, but he’s been so distant. Sometimes I look at him across the dinner table and I feel like I don't even know the man he's become. He’s hiding something about the company accounts.”
November 4: “I found a stash of documents in his private gym locker. Offshore shell companies, money moving through accounts I’ve never seen. Is he laundering money? God, please let me be wrong. If the authorities find out, it could destroy our family.”
Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. His hands began to shake violently over the keyboard.
That wasn't money laundering. That was corporate restructuring for an undercover forensic audit he had been conducting with federal agents to take down a massive international embezzlement ring that had infiltrated his firm—a ring that Rebeca had unknowingly been tied to through her previous alias.
Elena hadn't been running away from him. She had been investigating Rebeca using Daniel’s own secure network, and she had discovered that Rebeca was the primary embezzlement target within the firm.
That was why Rebeca had murdered her. It wasn't just about the house or the estate. It was to cover up a multi-million-dollar corporate heist.
Suddenly, the front security monitor on his desktop flashed red.
An alert popped up: Perimeter Breach - East Wing Gate.
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Daniel looked at the live camera feed. A black van had just rammed through the estate's secondary security gate, and three masked figures carrying heavy tactical gear were swarming up the front steps.
They weren't police. They were Rebeca’s co-conspirators, and they were coming to destroy the hard drive, the evidence, and anyone standing in their way.
