Part 4 — The Billionaire Fired Me on the Very First Day, but After One Phrase from Me, His Face Suddenly Turned to Stone

The lawyer slowly lowered the telephone.

“What statement?” Adrian asked.

“With your signature. You supposedly admit that after your father’s murder you participated in the deals.”

“That is a lie.”

“I know. But the document is notarized.”

Outside, the sound of cars braking was heard. Red and white lights flashed on the glass door of the house.

Valeria jumped up from her chair.

“Adrian, you planned all this to accuse me!”

“For two years I was learning to get up from a wheelchair, Valeria. I had no time to plan court traps.”

“You always lied!”

The lawyer raised his hand at her.

“Say nothing more. Do not speak with the police.”

“You are my lawyer!” Valeria shouted.

“From this moment I am no longer. You are not a client to me, but a possible participant in a crime.”

That was the first moment when Valeria lost control. Her expensive ring fell onto the table and clinked sharply against the wooden surface.

Adrian brought himself to the window. Outside stood two investigators and uniformed police officers.

“Marisol, leave here,” he told me.

“My mother needs medicines. And the truth too.”

“It is dangerous in this house now.”

“For more than two years you have lived in a dangerous place and sent others before it.”

He gave a small laugh, but there was no strength in the laughter.

“You are still not afraid?”

“I am afraid. I simply can no longer run away.”

The police officers entered the room. The female chief showed a document.

“Valeria Montes, you are under arrest on charges of fraud, concealment of evidence, and conspiracy.”

Valeria rushed at Adrian.

“Tell them that I knew nothing!”

“I cannot say that,” he answered. “Because I know that you knew.”

For the first time she heard her own voice from the side.

The lawyer placed a tablet on the table and turned on the recording. It was the audio from the night when Valeria threatened Adrian. Her voice rang out clearly in the room.

“If you do not sign, you will also finish your father’s case. No one will believe you. Not even your beloved employee.”

Valeria’s face changed.

“That is not my voice.”

“That is your voice,” Adrian said.

“You turned on the recorder!”

“No. Marisol found it.”

I watched how she recognized her own words and still denied them. Then I understood that the heaviest punishment for her was not the police handcuffs. It was hearing her own voice.

Valeria was taken away.

But the case did not end there.

The investigator handed Adrian a second document. This statement came from the company that managed his lands. It said that one day before the accident Adrian himself had signed the illegal deal.

“I did not sign this,” he said.

“The signature resembles yours,” the investigator answered.

“But that day I was in the hospital.”

I looked at the sheet from the folder. In the lower corner there was a small red stamp. Exactly like the one in my father’s old file.

“My father never used this stamp,” I said.

The lawyer took the sheet from me.

“Then someone inside the company betrayed us and deceived everyone.”

That night the police sealed the house. Adrian and I were questioned in different rooms. Lupita brought medicines to my mother, because I no longer managed to go to the hospital.

In the morning Adrian called me.

“Marisol, your father was not only my enemy,” he told me. “He was the only person who warned me even when I did not listen. If you want us to take his case to the end, you must also stand against the company.”

“Against the company or your own past?”

A long silence fell.

“Both.”

The following weeks passed in interrogations, documents, and preparatory court hearings. It turned out that the financial director, Raul Mendes, was Valeria’s accomplice. He created the false contracts, planned the night of my father’s murder, and then used Adrian’s old signatures.

Raul denied everything at first.

But one of the cameras filmed his car on the street where my father was last seen. Another recording was found in the company’s backup archive. It showed how he handed Valeria a folder of documents.

The case reached court.

The judge found Valeria and Raul guilty of fraud, conspiracy, and destruction of evidence. The investigation into my father’s murder continued separately, but one thing was already clear: my father’s name had been restored.

Adrian also admitted his share of responsibility. He said that for two years he had known about the danger, but had remained silent out of fear and treated the employees abusively.

“I thought that if I drove everyone away from me, no one would be able to deceive me,” he told me after the trial.

“And did you find the truth?”

“No. I found only loneliness.”

He gave part of the company to a foundation named after my father. The foundation helped injured people with rehabilitation. And I began working there as a coordinator for communication with patients.

My mother’s treatment also continued. Our small apartment was still old, but we were no longer late with the rent. Every morning I hung my mother’s knitted red bird by the window so that it could touch the sun.

Three months later Adrian came to the foundation independently for the first time. He moved from the wheelchair to a cane. His steps were heavy, but he chose each step himself.

“I will not manage to dance today,” he said.

“Today no one is asking you to dance either.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow you decide yourself.”

Six months later my mother was handing out drawings to small children at the foundation. One girl drew Adrian’s legs dancing on a blue floor.

“Is this you?” the child asked.

Adrian looked at the drawing for a long time.

“Not yet,” he told her. “But I may become so.”

That same evening my telephone received a message from an unknown number.

“You can come back. I will explain everything. I will help your family again.”

It was Valeria.

I deleted the message and did not answer. She was not offering me help. Once again she wanted me to carry the burden of her conscience.

When Adrian found this out, he asked me nothing.

“You did the right thing,” he only told me.

“How do you know?”

“Because for the first time you did not run away to save yourself. You simply did not return to where your truth was not needed.”

That night I returned home. My mother was asleep. The red knitted bird hung by the window, and the weak warm air moved its wings.

I watched it for a long time.

I used to think that this bird helped me remember the way.

Now I understood that it had never shown me the way.

It simply reminded me that returning home was always my own choice.

And for the first time in my life, I truly came home.