Chapter 12 - The Affidavit
Daniel Price swore that I had known about the Montenegro connection before taking the estate job.
He claimed my mother told me everything years earlier.
He claimed I sought employment in Victoria’s house to create a path into the family.
It was a clean story.
Simple.
Believable.
And completely false.
I called Daniel.
No answer.
Mr. Bell sent someone to his apartment.
Empty.
His closet was half cleared.
His car was gone.
Julian’s lawyers demanded an immediate freeze on every part of the transfer.
The court granted a temporary hold pending a hearing.
Reporters camped outside again.
MAID HEIR ACCUSED OF INFILTRATING FAMILY.
This time, the story hurt.
Not because strangers believed it.
Because for the first time, I wondered whether Rafael’s search had touched my life before I knew it.
Had my mother told me more than I remembered?
Had she hidden something to protect me?
I returned to her storage box.
At the bottom was an old laptop I had never managed to start after she died.
A repair shop recovered the hard drive.
There were hundreds of emails.
One was from Daniel Price.
He had contacted my mother twelve years earlier.
She responded once.
Do not contact my daughter. She knows nothing. If Rafael wants proof, he can come himself.
That sentence saved me.
It also broke my heart.
My mother had protected me from a family she did not trust.
Mr. Bell filed the email with the court.
Then the repair technician found another file.
An audio recording.
My mother’s voice.
“If Lucia ever finds this,” she said, “I need her to know I was not ashamed of where I came from. I was afraid of people who seemed to think blood gave them ownership over other people.”
I covered my mouth.
She continued.
“Rafael may be telling the truth. But if he wants to know us, he has to come without lawyers and without money.”
He never got the chance.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer the next year.
The hearing was scheduled for Monday.
Sunday night, someone slipped an envelope under my hotel door.
Inside was a copy of Daniel’s affidavit.
Across the first page, someone had written in red ink:
CHECK THE NOTARY.
The notary was an employee of Montenegro Holdings.
May you like
And the date of notarization was impossible.
Daniel Price had been in Canada that day.
