Chapter 10 - Mateo“Who's Mateo?” I asked my mother.

“I don't know.”

She looked honestly frightened. My father had been a quiet man, but secrets were not his style. If he'd hidden something, he'd had a reason.

Lucía traced the name through public business records. Mateo Rivas was Eduardo's younger brother. He had briefly managed the warehouse company before disappearing from its filings after the fire. A former employee directory listed a forwarding address in Segovia.

I wanted to drive there immediately. Lucía insisted we call first. An elderly man answered after six rings.

“Mateo Rivas?”

“Who wants him?”

“My name is Clara Morales. My father was Andrés Morales.”

The receiver fell silent.

“Mr. Rivas?”

“I wondered when one of you would call.”

We met two days later in a bright café beside a public square. Mateo was seventy, with a gardener's hands and the same dark eyes Javier had inherited. He studied my face for a long moment.

“Andrés had your smile,” he said.

“Did you know him well?”

“Well enough to owe him an apology.”

He said Eduardo and Sergio had diverted payments from the old warehouse project while subcontractors went unpaid. Mateo had discovered irregular invoices, but his brother persuaded him to sign a settlement and leave the business. My father had kept copies of delivery records that contradicted the invoices.

“Why didn't you tell the workers?” I asked.

“Cowardice,” Mateo said. “I told myself I was protecting my family. Then I watched other families lose everything.”

“What does Mercedes have to do with it?”

Mateo stared into his coffee. “She handled the accounts. When Eduardo died, she kept the papers. She spent years saying they were all gone.”

“Were they?”

“No. Andrés had duplicates.”

I thought of the missing storage boxes and the message about Dad trusting the wrong family.

“Did Javier know?”

“I don't know what she told him.” Mateo placed a folded document on the table. “But your husband came here last month. He wanted me to sign a statement saying your father invented the accusations.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

He unfolded the paper. It was a letter signed by Mercedes, offering him money for his silence.

At the bottom was a handwritten note: After Clara's account clears, make the final payment.

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