Chapter 230

• VALENTINA
• ~•~
• The mansion was dead quiet that night. Late enough that even the staff had gone to bed. I sat cross-legged on my bed with the lamp turned low, the new pages from Harlan spread out in front of me like pieces of a puzzle I couldn’t stop working. The messages had come through a secure app earlier, plain text that vanished after I read it twice. I printed the important parts in the small office downstairs when no one was around. Now the ink stared back at me. Fresh dates. More names crossed out. Payments tied to accounts Gustavo still used. Every line matched the month my father went down and the month my mother vanished. The stolen letter from Ricci sat right in the middle of it all. V.R. transfer. Facility. I traced the connections with my finger, adding arrows in pencil to my timeline on the notebook page. Each new fact pulled the knot in my chest tighter. Betrayal didn’t hit fast anymore. It settled slow and heavy, like water filling a room.