The director grabbed the mouse. Click.
The bar began to load. First the words: « Consolidated Assets. » Then numbers, more numbers, forming an amount so high that none of the adults present could have imagined it. But before the full sum appeared… someone knocked loudly on the door.
— Open up, please! Right away!
The voice was breathless, desperate.
« Who is here? » asked the inspector.
— I’m his mother. Don’t let him see this alone.
The door opened and Maria entered, her apron still tied around her waist, her hair hastily tied back, her chest heaving with exertion, as if she had run across the entire city. She threw herself upon David and hugged him as if she had just rescued him from the edge of a precipice.
— My son… — she gasped. — Tell me you haven’t seen it yet.
« Mom, I’m fine, » he stammered. « I just want to… »
« You don’t understand, » she interrupted, her eyes reddening. « This money… it’s not just money. »
The inspector tried to reassure her.
— Mrs. Maria, your son is safe. We are following procedure. He is fully entitled to his grandfather’s inheritance.
She closed her eyes for a second. When she spoke, her voice trembled.
— I know. I know what my father left behind. But you don’t know the rest. You don’t know what it cost us.
David felt as if the ground was giving way beneath his feet.
— Mom… you’re scaring me.
Maria sat down, placed her hands on her knees and let slip, almost in a whisper, the truth she had kept for ten years.
— The reason you grew up without your father… is right here. In this account. When he discovered what was really behind this fortune, he disappeared. Not because he abandoned us… but because he was forced to.
Silence fell like a heavy blanket. No one dared to breathe too deeply.
“Dangerous people were involved,” she continued. “People who thought they owned that money. They tried to use us, to buy your father, to threaten your grandfather. And your father chose to disappear… to save you.”
David froze. All his life, he had believed that his father couldn’t bear poverty and had left them. This version of the story was crumbling before his eyes.
« Why didn’t you tell me? » he asked, his voice breaking.
« Because I wanted you to have a childhood, » she replied. « I didn’t want you to live looking back, like your father. »
The boy stared at the half-loaded screen, the sum hidden like a sleeping monster. He swallowed hard.
— Mom… even with all this… — he said softly —, Grandpa trusted me. I can’t run away.
Maria hugged him even tighter.
— That’s why I’m here. I won’t let you face this alone.
Then the story took a new turn.
The door burst open again. A tall, thin man, with several days’ growth of beard, his simple shirt sticking to his skin with sweat, entered almost staggering.
« Stop! » he shouted. « Don’t display the balance! »
Maria was breathless.
« No… » she murmured. « It’s not possible. »
David felt as if his body were turning into cotton. He had seen that look before… in an old photograph at the bottom of a box.
— David… — said the man, his voice breaking. — I am… your father.
No one spoke for several long seconds. Time stood still in the small office. The boy clenched his fists, trying to understand how someone he had always believed to be dead could be standing there, just a few feet away from him.
— If you are my father… — he managed to say —, why did you disappear?
The reply arrived, heavy with fatigue.
« Because we were threatened, » the man whispered. « Either I left… or they destroyed you. I chose you. I chose to be the coward in this story… so that you would survive. »
The inspector, the director, even the mother, remained silent. This moment did not belong to them.
But history had not yet revealed all its cards.
A woman in a dark suit, black briefcase in hand, entered with a confident stride.
« I’ve arrived just in time, it seems, » she said. « I’m Elena Duarte, David’s grandfather’s lawyer. »
She placed a large envelope on the table.
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