Chapter 11 - ELENA’S LETTER
The letter had been sitting in Sebastian’s private archive for five years.
He claimed he had forgotten it.
Roberto almost struck him when he said that.
Instead he demanded the box.
Inside were Elena’s old legal notes.
A folder.
A sealed envelope.
Roberto recognized his late wife’s handwriting immediately.
FOR ROBERTO.
His hands trembled as he opened it.
The letter was short.
Roberto,
I hope I am wrong.
A woman named Vanessa Vale has contacted me three times.
She claims she knows things about your business travel and says you have been unfaithful.
I do not believe her.
But she seems determined to frighten me.
I spoke to Richard Bell, who says Vanessa did something similar before and that she is dangerous when rejected.
Sebastian told me not to worry.
I am writing this because if anything happens to me, I need you to know I was not imagining it.
Please keep Sofía safe.
I love you.
Elena.
Roberto read it twice.
Then a third time.
His eyes blurred.
Vanessa had not entered his life after Elena.
She had been circling it before Elena died.
Marcus researched deeper.
Vanessa had attended several charity events connected to Roberto’s company while Elena was alive.
She had tried to approach him twice.
Roberto did not remember her.
Apparently Vanessa remembered him.
Richard Bell had discovered her obsession.
Two months later, he was dead.
The following year Elena died.
Two years after that, Vanessa appeared beside Roberto at Sebastian’s charity table.
Nothing looked accidental anymore.
Police reopened Elena’s case.
They could not yet prove Vanessa had touched the brakes.
But they found something else.
A payment from a shell company connected to Richard Bell.
Transferred three days before Elena’s crash.
Recipient.
An auto technician who had disappeared shortly afterward.
The technician had died overseas two years later.
The trail seemed dead.
Until Marcus found an email recovered from one of Richard Bell’s old accounts.
It was written to his attorney before his death.
If anything happens to me, investigate Vanessa.
She has been researching Roberto Salazar and his wife.
She thinks Elena is the only thing standing between her and the life she deserves.
Roberto sat alone in the dark after reading it.
He thought about Elena.
Her laughter.
Her stubbornness.
The way she used to kiss Sofía’s forehead.
He had spent years believing fate took her.
Now greed might have.
María entered quietly.
“You need rest.”
Roberto shook his head.
“I failed both of them.”
María did not allow the sentence to stand.
“You trusted the wrong person.”
“That is not the same as failing your daughter.”
Roberto looked toward Sofía’s room.
“I brought Vanessa into this house.”
“Yes.”
“And now you are taking her out.”
The words steadied him.
But upstairs, Sofía had awakened.
She stood silently at the railing.
She had heard enough.
“Daddy?”
Roberto looked up.
“Yes?”
“Did Vanessa hurt Mommy too?”
He could not lie.
“I don’t know yet.”
Sofía held the railing tighter.
May you like
Then she whispered, “I think she told me she did.”
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