I killed the hallway lights, lifted my suitcase, and kissed my daughters goodbye, already knowing I wasn't getting on any plane.

The heavy oak door of the security room swung open with a muffled click, and Tomás stepped back, clearing a path. Valeria entered first, her small chin tilted upward in that fierce, defensive angle that reminded me so much of Marina when she was cornered. Sofía clutched her recovered stuffed rabbit so tightly its threadbare ears were nearly torn off.

"Dad?" Sofía breathed, her eyes wide and wet in the dim light of the monitors. "You... you didn't go?"

I stood up so fast my chair scraped loudly against the linoleum floor. I crossed the small room in two strides, dropping to my knees before they could say another word. I pulled them both into my arms, burying my face in Sofía's hair and feeling the steady, trembling tension in Valeria's shoulders. They didn't pull away, but they didn't relax completely either. There was a wariness in them — a fragile shell built from weeks of hiding behind closed bedroom doors.

"I'm here," I whispered, my voice cracking. "I'm right here. You're safe."

Valeria pulled back just enough to look into my eyes, her gaze piercingly bright. "Did you see it? Did you see what she did to Sofía?"

"I saw everything, sweetie," I said, cupping her cold cheek with my palm. "I've been watching from down here all day. I've been watching for a long time."

"Then why didn't you stop her?" Valeria's voice didn't crack; it was steady, cold, and loaded with a bitterness that cut deeper than any blade. "Why did you let her stay? Every time she broke Sofía's things, every time she told us we were bad children because we missed Mom... you smiled and kissed her on the forehead."

The words struck me like a physical blow. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. What could I say? That I had been blinded by a woman who stroked my ego while tearing down my family? That I had let a stranger dictate the temperature of my own home because I was too cowardly to face the quietness left behind by Marina?

"I was blind, Val," I finally managed, my voice choked. "I let her trick me. But that ends tonight."

"It doesn't end just because you lock yourself in a room," Valeria retorted, her small hands clenching into fists at her sides. "She has papers, Dad. She makes you sign things when you're tired from work. She talks about the company accounts. She tells us that once she marries you, we're going to boarding school in Switzerland and Camila will be thrown out on the street."

Beside me, Tomás shifted his weight, his face darkening. "Mr. Ortega, the girl might be onto something. Over the past three months, Miss Renata has requested access to the auxiliary corporate archives three times. She claimed it was for interior design planning for your merger party, but her keycard logs show she visited the legal compliance floor instead."

My blood ran cold. Renata had no business in corporate legal compliance. My company, Ortega Global, was structured to protect my daughters' future trusts. If someone were to manipulate the share distribution or insert legacy clauses into a prenuptial agreement under the guise of domestic arrangements...

"Tomás," I said, my tone turning lethal. "Pull up the logs for the main safe in my study. The physical one behind the oil painting."

Tomás tapped a few commands onto the console. A split screen flickered, showing the hallway outside my private study upstairs. The timestamp showed footage from two nights ago, at 2:15 AM.

On the screen, Renata stood before the open safe. Her face, usually so soft and smiling, was illuminated by the blue glow of a portable scanner. She was photographing page after page of my late wife's original will, along with the foundational trust documents for Valeria and Sofía.

"She's not just playing domestic tyrant," Tomás murmured, leaning closer to the screen. "She's building an exit strategy. Or a hostile takeover."

"She's stealing our lives," Sofía whimpered, pressing her face into my shoulder again. "She said Mom's room smells like dust and she's going to throw all her clothes away on Sunday."

Something inside me fractured, and what remained was not grief, and not guilt. It was pure, unadulterated fury. For four years, I had preserved Marina's memory like a shrine behind locked doors, believing that moving on meant finding a new partner to share the load. Instead, I had invited a viper into the nursery.

"We need Camila," I said, standing up and grabbing my jacket from the back of the chair. "Tomás, patch me through to her personal phone. Use the encrypted channel so Renata's monitoring app doesn't pick it up."

Tomás nodded quickly, his fingers flying across the keyboard. A second later, a small red indicator light blinked on the master board.

"She's picking up," Tomás whispered, sliding a headset across the desk to me.

I placed it over my ear, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. "Camila," I said, my voice low and urgent. "Don't say my name out loud. Just listen to me."

There was a brief pause on the other end, the faint sound of a vacuum cleaner humming in the background, and then Camila's calm, steady voice came through the receiver.

"Mr. Ortega. I figured you weren't on that plane when Tomás didn't sign off on the fuel manifests this morning."

I blinked in surprise, then let out a harsh, dry breath. "Of course you did. You always notice everything."