Chapter 4 - The Woman on the List

I read the words twice.

REMOVE FIRST.

Marisol stood across the kitchen from me, her face unreadable.

Naomi leaned over the laptop.

“Do not assume that means physical harm.”

“What else does it mean?” I asked.

“It could mean remove from employment. Remove from access. Remove from the household.”

Hector said, “Or discredit her.”

We all looked toward the hallway leading to the servants’ wing.

The planted earrings suddenly had a different shape in my mind.

Not petty jealousy.

Strategy.

“Why Marisol first?” I asked.

No one answered.

Marisol folded her arms.

“Because the girls trust me.”

“That’s not enough.”

“It may be.”

Naomi shook her head. “Not if Chloe was also taking corporate documents.”

I looked at Marisol.

“Did you ever see her in my office?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Several times.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because she was your fiancée. She had access to most of the house.”

“Not the safe.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Hector asked, “Did she ever ask you about Mr. Vance’s schedule?”

Marisol gave him a long look.

“She asked everyone about his schedule.”

“Anything unusual?”

“Yes.”

I waited.

“She wanted to know whether the girls ever came into the home office when Alexander wasn’t there.”

Naomi straightened.

“When?”

“About two months ago.”

“What did you say?”

“That they knew the office was private.”

“And then?”

“She asked whether Valeria knew the code to the door.”

I felt sick.

Valeria did know it.

Not because I had told her, but because she once saw me enter it and later repeated the numbers as a game.

I had laughed.

Chloe must have heard.

Hector opened more files from the flash drive.

One folder contained photographs of documents.

Another contained audio clips.

In one, I heard my own voice during a conference call discussing a confidential land purchase in Nevada.

“Recorded from your study,” Hector said.

Naomi swore under her breath.

Then we found a folder titled L.

Inside were screenshots of messages between Chloe and someone saved only as Lucien.

The first few looked personal.

Dinner reservations. Hotel rooms. Complaints about me traveling too much.

Then the tone changed.

Lucien: YOU NEED THE MERGER FILE BEFORE HE SIGNS.

Chloe: I’M WORKING ON IT.

Lucien: AND THE WOMAN?

Chloe: MARISOL IS A PROBLEM.

Lucien: THEN MAKE HER LOOK LIKE ONE.

No one spoke.

I scrolled.

Chloe: THE OLDER GIRL IS EASY TO PRESSURE.

My hand stopped.

I could not read the next line.

Naomi reached over and closed the laptop halfway.

“Enough for tonight.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“She used my daughter.”

“I know.”

“She threatened her.”

“We need to preserve this correctly, not have you smash the computer.”

I stepped away.

Marisol’s voice came quietly from behind me.

“Valeria is going to think this is her fault.”

I turned.

“She already does.”

“Then that is the first thing we fix.”

Not the company.

Not the stolen records.

Not my humiliation.

My daughter.

Marisol was right, and I hated that I needed someone else to tell me.

I went upstairs.

Valeria’s light was on.

I knocked and entered.

She was sitting in bed with her knees pulled to her chest.

“Can’t sleep?”

She shook her head.

I sat beside her.

“Chloe asked you for my office code, didn’t she?”

Her face crumpled.

“I didn’t tell her.”

“I know.”

“She said if I didn’t, she’d make you send Marisol away.”

My chest tightened.

“And the things in Marisol’s room?”

“She told me if I didn’t do it, Sofia wouldn’t be allowed to keep Bunny because Bunny made her act like a baby.”

I closed my eyes.

Valeria whispered, “I’m sorry.”

I pulled her into my arms.

“No. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For making you feel like you had to survive things I should have seen.”

She cried against me.

After a while, she said, “There’s something else.”

I went still.

“What?”

“Chloe has another phone.”

“Where?”

“She hides it in the greenhouse.”

I looked toward the dark window.

The greenhouse stood beyond the pool, quiet under the garden lights.

Valeria wiped her eyes.

“I saw her put it under the stone bench.”

And suddenly the list on the flash drive was no longer the only secret hidden inside my home.

Hector also found a pattern in the household calendar. Every time Chloe accused Marisol of being “too close” to the girls, the accusation followed a week when I had traveled. It was as if my absence gave Chloe both the opportunity to pressure them and the evidence she needed to complain about the bond created in my place.

“She was manufacturing the problem she blamed Marisol for,” Naomi said.

I thought about every dinner where Chloe had sighed that the girls were distant with me.

She had presented herself as the only adult willing to tell me an uncomfortable truth.

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In reality, she had been widening the distance and then pointing to it.

That realization hurt because manipulation works best when it borrows material from something already true. I had been absent. Chloe did not invent that weakness. She simply weaponized it.