Luis stared at the sealed evidence bag on the entry table as though it contained something alive.
Across the label, printed in black block letters, was the name of Mateo Salas—the forensic accountant Luis had quietly hired fourteen months earlier, when his construction company began collapsing under unpaid invoices and hidden loans.
Mateo had not arrived alone.
A uniformed officer stood beside him, and behind them waited a woman from the financial crimes unit with a tablet tucked beneath her arm.
Luis’s knees bent slightly.
He caught the edge of the table before anyone else noticed.
“This is absurd,” he said.
“You cannot bring police into my house because my wife had an episode.”
I looked down at the deed lying beneath my hand.
“It is not your house.”
The officer’s gaze moved from Luis to Isabel, who was still wrapped in my coat beside the open door.
Dirt marked her cheek.
Her torn sleeve exposed a purple bruise near her wrist.
Luis saw the officer notice it.
His face changed immediately.
“She falls,” he said.
“She has been unwell for months.
I have records.”
“So do I,” Mateo replied.
He opened the evidence bag.
Inside were bank statements, signed payment authorizations, copies of invoices, and a red leather ledger with Luis’s initials embossed on the cover.
The blonde woman in the red dress took another step away from him.
“What is that?” she asked.
Mateo removed the first document and placed it on top of the termination notice.
“A transfer from Isabel Ruiz’s professional account to a company called LMR Urban Services.
Forty-eight thousand euros.”
Luis pointed at Isabel.
“She approved it.”
Mateo laid down a second page.
“Another transfer.
Thirty-two thousand.”
Then a third.
“And another for seventy-one thousand.”
The room had become so quiet that I could hear wine dripping from the edge of the table onto the floor.
Mateo turned the ledger toward the officer.
“LMR Urban Services has no employees, no office, and no active contracts.
Its beneficial owner is Luis Mendez Ruiz.”
The woman in red stared at Luis.
“You told me your investors gave you that money.”
He ignored her.
“My wife and I share everything.
Those transfers are legal.”
I knelt beside Isabel.
“Did you authorize them?”
Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
Luis leaned forward.
“Answer carefully, Isabel.
You know how confused you get.”
The threat was wrapped in tenderness, but everyone heard it.
Isabel’s fingers found the cuff of my coat.
She gripped it until her knuckles whitened.
“No,” she whispered.
Luis laughed once.
“She does not remember.”
“I remember,” Isabel said.
Her voice was barely louder than the rain beginning outside, but the room shifted toward her.
She lifted her head.
“He told me the bank had frozen my account because I was ill.
He changed my passwords.
He took my phone.
When I asked questions, he said I was frightening the clients.”
One of the dinner guests, a gray-haired man named Rafael, stood from the sofa.
“Luis told us Isabel had stopped working voluntarily,” he said.
Luis turned on him.
“Sit down.”
Rafael did not.
“He said she was receiving treatment in a private clinic.”
“She was,” Luis snapped.
Isabel’s eyes closed.
I felt her body tense beside me.
“Which clinic?” I asked.
Luis hesitated.
That
