Chapter 8 - The Offer Rodrigo Should Never Have MadeRodrigo came to me that night for the first time since the forensic report.
He didn’t come alone.
Two men waited in the car outside Valeria’s office, expensive suits pretending to be security.
Rodrigo sat across from me like we were still brothers discussing an unfortunate business dispute.
“This is getting ugly,” he said.
“It already is.”
“You’re emotional.”
“My wife was murdered.”
His jaw tightened.
“No one murdered Camila.”
“The pathologist disagrees.”
He leaned back.
“Mother says you’re being manipulated.”
“By facts?”
His smile vanished.
Then he slid a folder across the desk.
Inside was an offer.
My shares in a side property development.
Cash settlement.
A promise to “stabilize” the vineyards.
And, almost as an afterthought, a written statement drafted for me to sign confirming that Camila’s death was a tragic obstetric event and that my son had been stillborn.
I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was the first truly honest thing Rodrigo had done. He had put the lie in writing.
“You think I’m for sale?”
“I think you’re grieving and tired.”
“I think you’re terrified.”
That landed.
Rodrigo lowered his voice.
“You have no idea how large this will become if you keep going.”
“Then tell me where my son is.”
He stood abruptly.
“I don’t know.”
Liar.
“Then why are you trying to make me sign a stillbirth statement?”
His silence answered for him.
I tapped the folder.
“You should have sent a better offer.”
At the door he turned back.
“You always thought Camila made you stronger,” he said. “She made you weak.”
“No,” I replied. “She made me difficult to control.”
That was the last conversation we had as private men.
After he left, Valeria pointed to a small recording device hidden under a legal pad.
“Got him,” she said.
On the tape, Rodrigo had not confessed to murder.
But he had tried to induce me to sign a false statement concerning my wife’s death and my son’s status.
Tampering.
Obstruction.
Proof of consciousness of guilt.
Still, it wasn’t enough to find the baby.
That answer came from somewhere I did not expect.
Near midnight, Lucía called from the main house whispering so hard I could barely hear her.
“Don Julián… Doña Teresa moved boxes from the nursery into the chapel room. There is a locked trunk with Señora Camila’s things.”
“Can you get it?”
A pause.
Then:
“Yes. But if she catches me, she will destroy me.”
I closed my eyes.
“Do it only if safe.”
Half an hour later, a car I recognized from the house staff pulled behind Valeria’s building. Lucía stepped out carrying a wooden trunk.
Inside were baby clothes, Camila’s prenatal folder, and a rose-gold phone I had assumed was lost.
Camila’s backup phone.
The battery was dead, but once charged, it gave us something more dangerous than Rodrigo’s offer.
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It gave us Camila’s voice from the week before she died.
And on the final recording, she sounded more frightened than I had ever heard her.
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