Chapter 4 - The Sting
By midnight, the Beltrán mansion was quieter than it had been since Daniela’s death, but it was no longer the heavy, suffocating silence of a graveyard. It was the quiet of a command center before a launch.
The living room had been roughly cleared. The broken glass was gone, packed into neat boxes by the back door. The six girls were gathered around the massive glass dining table, their initial hostility toward Elena completely replaced by a desperate, collective focus.
Julián sat at the head of the table, his laptop open, his fingers flying across a secure, secondary server network that Tomás didn't know existed. Elena sat at the opposite end, a notebook open, coordinating the girls like a seasoned logistics officer.
"We only have nine hours before the board convened," Julián said, his voice tight with fatigue but carrying a new, fierce clarity. "Tomás has spent the last six months building a false paper trail. He’s transferred twenty million dollars of corporate assets into a shell company registered in Daniela’s name. If he presents that to the investors tomorrow, they’ll believe Daniela was embezzling to fund an offshore account, and that I’m covering it out of guilt."
"He used Mom's signature," Sofía said, her teeth clenched. "He made her sign papers when she was too heavily medicated to read them. I found the copies in her closet greenhouse."
"We can't just deny it," Elena said, leaning forward, her eyes catching the light of the chandelier. "If you just present your version of the truth, the board will see it as a domestic dispute—a billionaire trying to clear his late wife's name. You need the digital footprint. We need the location data from the exact moment those messages were sent."
"The corporate server logs the IP," Julián muttered, shaking his head. "But Tomás used a VPN that bounced the location to a server in Switzerland. It's untraceable by standard protocols before 9:00 AM."
"It's not untraceable from inside the house," a small voice piped up from the corner of the table.
Everyone turned to look at Mar. The twelve-year-old was holding a small, pink Nintendo Switch console.
"Mar?" Julián frowned. "What does your game have to do with this?"
"Tomás used to sit in the kitchen with Mom while you were away," Mar said, her voice small but steady. "He told her he was checking her phone settings to make sure it was 'safe.' But he always connected his personal tablet to the house Wi-Fi to do it. My Switch logs every device that connects to the router so I can play my online games without lag. I have his device’s permanent MAC address stored in the router’s history from nineteen days ago. At exactly 4:10 AM."
Julián stared at his second-oldest daughter, a wave of profound pride and intense shame washing over him. He had spent years looking for geniuses in Silicon Valley, completely oblivious to the brilliant, observant children living under his own roof.
"If I have the MAC address," Julián said, his fingers already moving across the keyboard, "I can cross-reference it with the internal security logs of the fintech app. I can prove his personal tablet was the source of the data injection that ruined Daniela’s accounts."
"But we need him to admit it," Elena added, her psychological instincts kicking in. "Men like Tomás are driven by a need for intellectual superiority. He spent seven years playing the loyal servant while believing he was smarter than you, Mr. Beltrán. If you confront him with just data, he’ll hire a team of lawyers to muddy the water. You need him to confess on camera, where the board can see his true face."
Sofía looked at Elena, a slow, determined smile spreading across her face. "He still thinks we're crazy. He thinks the '37 nannies' story proves this house is unstable. Let’s use that."
The twins, Luna and Clara, clinked their school scissors together with a mischievous, synchronized grin. "We’re really good at making people want to leave," Luna said.
"This time," Clara finished, "we're going to make him stay long enough to ruin himself."
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Julián looked at Elena, an unspoken understanding passing between them. "Elena... this is dangerous. If this goes wrong, my company is gone, and your reputation through the agency will be ruined."
Elena pulled off her yellow rubber gloves, folding them neatly on the table. "Mr. Beltrán, I came here to clean a house. Tomorrow morning, we're going to finish the job."
