Chapter 11 - The Woman Who Had Been Missing for Three YearsLucía Ferrer answered the telephone at 9:32 the following morning.
For three years, her name had existed only in old records, unanswered messages, and rumors among former employees of Northbridge Trading.
Now, according to the investigator who located her, she was living in another city under her own name.
She was alive.
And she had agreed to speak.
Camila insisted that any interview be coordinated through the appropriate channels. Lucía had reason to fear the people involved, and we had no right to demand that she risk her safety simply because I needed answers.
The first meeting took place remotely, with an investigator present.
Lucía appeared on the screen wearing a plain gray sweater. She looked older than the woman in the company photograph, with dark shadows beneath her eyes and a thin scar near her hairline.
She studied me for several seconds.
“You're Alejandra.”
“Yes.”
“Your mother talked about you.”
I swallowed.
“What did she say?”
“That you were kind. That you believed people when they gave you a reason to. That she was afraid someone would use those qualities against you.”
I looked down.
Lucía leaned closer to the camera.
“Your mother tried to help me. I owe her the truth.”
She explained that she had worked in Northbridge Trading's accounts department for nearly seven years. Her job was to reconcile supplier invoices, verify payments, and investigate discrepancies.
At first, the errors seemed ordinary.
Duplicate invoice numbers.
Payments made before orders were delivered.
Transactions recorded under companies that had no apparent connection to the goods being purchased.
When Lucía questioned her supervisor, she was told the discrepancies were temporary accounting adjustments.
Then she found a series of invoices linked to BV Financial Services.
The company did not appear in the normal supplier records.
Its registration details were incomplete, but its account number matched one appearing in internal transfer instructions.
Lucía began documenting what she found.
A colleague warned her to stop.
She continued.
Eventually, she traced part of the payment trail to Meridian Asset Group and discovered that the company used the identities of people who did not appear to have any genuine connection to its business.
One of those people was me.
“I found your name on an authorization,” Lucía said. “I thought you were involved. Then I saw another document that showed your signature had been copied.”
“What made you certain?”
“Your mother sent a letter asking about the same transactions. She included a sample of your signature from an unrelated document and pointed out several differences.”
I remembered the disputed guarantee.
The strange final stroke.
The signature that looked like mine without quite belonging to me.
“What happened after you found the documents?” I asked.
Lucía's expression tightened.
“I gave copies to my manager. The following day, several files disappeared from the shared drive. Then I was told that an internal review had identified me as the person responsible for the discrepancies.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
She answered so quickly that I believed she had been waiting years for someone to ask.
“I had not authorized those payments. I had documented them because I thought the company needed to investigate. But the audit records were changed to make it appear that I had approved the transactions.”
I looked toward Camila.
It was the same pattern again.
A legitimate record.
An altered attachment.
A person whose name could be used to redirect suspicion.
Lucía continued.
“Your mother asked me whether I would be willing to provide a statement. I agreed. We arranged to meet after work, but someone contacted me that afternoon and told me the meeting had been canceled.”
“Who?”
“I don't know. The message came from a colleague's account.”
“Did you meet my mother afterward?”
“Yes. Once.”
Lucía lowered her eyes.
“She told me she had discovered a connection between Northbridge Trading and your husband's business activities. She believed he was using your identity to move money.”
The words hurt even though I had already begun to suspect the truth.
“What happened after that?”
“I was dismissed. The company alleged that I had mishandled records. My professional reputation was damaged, and I was frightened that I might be prosecuted for transactions I hadn't made.”
“So you left?”
“I left because I no longer knew whom to trust. I took copies of records I had lawfully retained for my defense, and I moved away.”
“Did you know my mother died?”
Lucía closed her eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you contact me?”
“Because I received a message warning me not to. It said you had already been investigated and that contacting you could expose me to further legal action.”
My throat tightened.
“I was never investigated.”
“I know that now.”
She took a breath.
“Your mother was trying to protect you, Alejandra. I was trying to protect myself. We both made decisions with incomplete information.”
I could not blame her for that.
I had spent years doing the same thing.
The investigator asked whether Lucía still possessed the records she had preserved.
She confirmed that she had several original emails, copies of invoices, and a digital record showing how the authorization documents had changed over time.
She also remembered a particular file.
A property schedule labeled B-17.
It contained a list of assets that had supposedly been pledged to support a financial arrangement connected to BV Financial Services.
The apartment appeared on the list.
So did an address associated with a storage facility.
My heart began racing.
The brass key.
The number stamped into its handle.
B-17.
I described the key to Lucía.
She looked startled.
“That may be the key to a document locker, not a storage cabinet. Northbridge used a facility for archived records. Several boxes were transferred there when the accounts department was reorganized.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“I remember the address. I can send it to the investigator.”
She wrote the address down and passed it to him privately.
Before ending the call, she asked me one question.
“Did your husband hurt you?”
I looked at the bandage on my cheek.
“Yes.”
Lucía's face crumpled slightly.
“I'm sorry.”
I had expected that apology to hurt, perhaps because it came from a stranger who had no obligation to care.
Instead, it made me feel less alone.
She understood what it meant to be blamed for discovering a problem rather than protected from the people who created it.
After the interview, the investigator confirmed that the facility was still operating. The key's marking was consistent with the facility's archival numbering system, although the box contents would need to be verified.
Access would have to be arranged through the appropriate legal process.
We waited for confirmation rather than attempting to enter the facility ourselves.
Meanwhile, Lucía agreed to provide her original records for examination.
For the first time, our evidence did not depend entirely on documents recovered from my home or statements from people closely connected to Iván.
We had an independent witness.
Someone whose records had existed before the current dispute.
Someone who could explain how the transactions were entered and why the invoices looked suspicious.
By evening, Camila had assembled a new chronology linking Lucía's records with my mother's files.
The financial trail stretched back three years.
And it contained something none of us had expected.
A transfer had been made from Northbridge Trading to an account held by a company registered in my father's name.
I stared at the entry.
“My father?”
Camila nodded slowly.
“According to this document, the account was opened under his name decades ago.”
“But he's dead.”
“The account records may be historical, or the company could have been using old identity information. We need to verify the details.”
I looked at the date of birth on the record.
It matched my father's.
The address matched the house where I had grown up.
And beside the account number was a short handwritten note.
Original beneficiary confirmed by A. Vega.
My mother's signature.
I felt a chill pass through me.
My mother had not simply discovered Iván's financial activity.
She had found a connection to someone in our family long before my marriage.
And if she had signed that note, she had known more about my father's financial life than she had ever told me.
I leaned toward the screen.
“What was my father involved in?”
Camila didn't pretend to know.
“We need the original account file.”
I thought about the old storage facility, the missing notebook, and the documents my mother had preserved.
The key might lead us to records that explained the false companies.
But the account connected to my father suggested the story was older than Iván.
Perhaps much older.
I had begun this investigation believing that my husband had built a trap around me.
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Now I wondered whether he had stepped into a trap someone else created long before we met.
And whether my mother had spent the last years of her life trying to dismantle it.
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