CHAPTER 117

With all the information I gathered from my father, plus the somewhat related ones I had gathered from Charles, I finally have decided to call my private investigator to ask for updates.

The moment the call came in, I froze, my heart lodged somewhere between fear and relief. The investigator’s voice was calm, clinical, as he laid out each piece of evidence he had collected—facts that aligned all too closely with the stories Charles and my father had told me. Each revelation was another blow to my resolve. Every instinct in me wanted to reject it, to deny the truth lurking in those findings.

But there was no denying it anymore. Thiago’s secrets, the shrouded details of my mother’s death, and the suspicion that had crept into my life like a silent intruder—all of it had been validated in one damning phone call.

I clutched my phone in a white-knuckled grip, barely feeling the sensation in my fingers. My mind raced back to that night in Miami, to my father’s words and the darkness in Char