Chapter 2 - The Audit of the Estate
By Wednesday morning—forty-eight hours after Beatriz had been escorted off the premises by private security and moved into a modest beachfront hotel suite downtown—the true extent of the rot within my household began to surface.
I sat at the massive mahogany desk in my study, surrounded by financial statements, bank ledgers, and employee contracts. Isabella was sitting on the leather sofa across the room, quietly coloring in a new sketchpad I had bought her yesterday, her blistered hands wrapped in clean bandages applied by our family physician.
The doctor had confirmed what my eyes had already suspected: Isabella’s hands showed signs of repeated physical trauma, consistent with heavy lifting, scrubbing floors without protection, and manual labor entirely unsuited for an eight-year-old child.
When the doctor asked how it happened, Isabella had looked down at her shoes and said nothing. She was still terrified that the invisible rules Beatriz had enforced would somehow return to punish her.
I had spent two hours kneeling beside her, holding her good hand, swearing on the memory of my own mother that Beatriz was never coming back, and that she would never, ever have to touch a trash bag or a cleaning rag again. Slowly, color had returned to Isabella’s cheeks, and for the first time in three years, I heard her laugh when I playfully tossed a crumpled piece of paper into the recycle bin from across the room.
Now, as she colored quietly, my intercom chimed.
“Mr. Moretti?” Rosa, our head housekeeper who had been on mandatory leave for the past month, spoke through the speaker. “Señor Alva is here from the corporate legal department. He says you requested the household audit.”
“Send him in, Rosa,” I said.
Señor Alva, a sharp-faced man in his fifties with wire-rimmed glasses and a thick leather briefcase, stepped into the study. He looked around warily, noting the absence of Beatriz’s decorative flourishes—she had already sent two movers to collect her clothes—before taking a seat opposite my desk.
“Good morning, Mateo,” Alva said, placing a thick manila folder on the blotter. “I’ve reviewed the accounts as you instructed. And... well, I think you need to see this.”
“Go ahead,” I said, leaning back in my leather chair.
“It appears Señora Beatriz wasn't just abusing her authority with household chores,” Alva began, adjusting his glasses. “Over the past eighteen months—specifically coinciding with the start of your Dubai project—there have been significant, unauthorized wire transfers originating from your personal domestic account and the Moretti Holdings charity fund.”
My eyes narrowed. “How much?”
“A total of four hundred and twenty thousand euros,” Alva said, sliding a printed transaction sheet across the desk. “The funds were funneled through three different shell companies registered in the Canary Islands, then deposited directly into a personal account held under a maiden name. Furthermore...”
He hesitated, glancing nervously toward Isabella, who was happily coloring a bright yellow sun.
“Furthermore, what?” I asked quietly.
“Furthermore, the domestic payroll records show that three months ago, Rosa and our two assistant housekeepers were systematically dismissed or driven to resign by Señora Beatriz under threats of salary withholding and defamation.”
Alva tapped another document.
“Señora Beatriz replaced them on paper with ghost employees—fictitious domestic workers whose wages were paid directly into her own accounts. But on the ground, she didn't hire replacements. She used Isabella to maintain the entire fifteen-room villa. Cleaning, scrubbing, laundry, gardening, garbage disposal... she treated your daughter as a full-time, unpaid domestic slave to pocket the payroll budget and fund her personal expenses.”
The silence in the study became absolute.
I looked down at the transaction sheet, then across the room at my daughter, who was humming a little tune to herself while coloring a green tree.
Four hundred and twenty thousand euros stolen from our family accounts. My daughter forced into servitude. My home turned into a prison camp while I sat thousands of miles away believing my family was living in luxury and peace.
“Where did the money go, Alva?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Based on preliminary asset tracing,” Alva replied grimly, “it went toward high-end gambling debts at a private club in Marbella, luxury jewelry purchased under the table, and the financing of a private apartment in Madrid maintained under an alias.”
I closed the folder slowly.
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“File a criminal complaint for embezzlement, fraud, and child exploitation by the end of the day,” I instructed. “I want every asset frozen. I want her credit cards blacklisted. I want her to discover what it actually feels like when the money runs out.”
Alva swallowed hard and nodded. “It will be done within the hour, Mateo.”
