Chapter 2 - The Employee Who Did Not Exist
Camila’s name sat on the tablet like an insult.
Alejandro stared at it first. Then he looked at me as if I had somehow arranged the whole thing to humiliate him twice in twenty-four hours.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
“Interesting choice of words,” I said. “Your girlfriend used the same one yesterday.”
Beatriz stiffened. “Do not be childish.”
My father did not raise his voice.
“Beatriz, if you speak to my daughter that way in my house again, the meeting ends.”
She went silent.
Dad’s assistant, Mariana, took the tablet back. “The user profile is real. It was created eighteen months ago. Camila Serrano is listed as an external strategic consultant.”
I felt my stomach turn.
Eighteen months.
The affair had started eleven months ago.
“What kind of consultant?” I asked.
“Financial forensics.”
Alejandro laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “Camila works in luxury events.”
Mariana looked at him. “That is not what her tax registration says.”
He stopped laughing.
Dad crossed the room and held out his hand for the tablet. “Who sponsored the profile?”
Mariana hesitated.
That hesitation scared me more than the answer.
“Mariana.”
She turned the screen toward him.
My father’s face changed.
Not much.
Arturo Mendoza had built a career out of revealing nothing.
But I knew him.
His thumb stopped moving.
“What?” I asked.
He handed me the tablet.
The sponsor field carried the name of a man I had known since childhood.
IGNACIO SALCEDO.
Chief Risk Officer, Grupo Vanguardia.
My father’s oldest friend.
My godfather.
The man who had taught me how to ride a bicycle when I was six.
“No,” I said.
Dad’s jaw tightened. “Call him.”
Mariana did.
Ignacio answered on the second ring.
“Arturo?”
My father put the call on speaker.
“I’m with Valeria.”
A pause.
Then: “I see.”
That was not the response of a man hearing unexpected news.
My skin went cold.
“Why does Camila Serrano have a Vanguardia profile?” Dad asked.
Ignacio exhaled slowly. “Because I hired her.”
Alejandro stood so fast the chair scraped the floor.
“What the hell do you mean you hired her?”
Dad’s eyes never left the phone.
“For what?”
“To investigate Desarrollos De la Vega.”
Nobody moved.
Ignacio continued, his voice careful. “Eighteen months ago, the risk team found inconsistencies in the project’s presales, contractor invoices, and land valuations. I needed someone outside the usual consulting network.”
I could barely process it.
“You put an investigator near my husband?”
“No,” he said. “I put an investigator near his company.”
“That distinction matters to you?”
“It should.”
“It doesn’t.”
Alejandro grabbed the edge of the table. “Did she sleep with me because of this?”
I looked at him.
For once, his pain did not make me feel responsible for fixing it.
Ignacio answered, “That was never part of her assignment.”
Beatriz whispered, “How convenient.”
I ignored her.
“Did my father know?” I asked.
Dad answered before Ignacio could.
“I knew Risk had opened a covert review. I did not know the investigator’s identity.”
I believed he believed that.
That was not the same as believing it was true.
Mariana’s phone buzzed.
She glanced down. “Security found something else.”
She showed me a still image from a lobby camera at Vanguardia headquarters.
2:07 a.m.
A woman in a black coat entering through the executive garage.
Camila.
She was not alone.
A man walked beside her, face turned away from the camera.
But his left hand was visible.
On his little finger was a square onyx ring I had seen at every Christmas dinner for three years.
I turned toward Alejandro.
He had recognized it too.
“That’s my father’s ring,” he whispered.
Federico de la Vega had entered Grupo Vanguardia with Camila six minutes before my confidential authorization page was stolen.
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