If Bruno’s notary had already prepared the dummy paperwork, it had to be somewhere in this house. Bruno was meticulous, but he was also profoundly arrogant. He believed I was too stupid to look, and too submissive to question him. He kept his important legal documents in a locked mahogany filing cabinet in his home office—a room I was strictly forbidden from entering unless I was “doing my chores.”
On Thursday morning, while Bruno was at a corporate luncheon, I entered the office with my vacuum cleaner. I shut the door and locked it from the inside.
I didn’t waste time trying to pick the lock of the filing cabinet. Instead, I went straight to his desk. I knew Bruno’s habits. He was lazy with his security. I checked the small decorative tray where he kept his spare coins and cufflinks. Nothing. I checked the hollowed-out dictionary on his bookshelf. Nothing.
Then, I looked at the floor. Right beneath the heavy mahogany desk was a loose floorboard—one that my father had intentionally designed as a hidden safe when he built the house. Bruno didn’t know the trick to opening it; he thought it was just an old, creaky board. But I knew. I pressed the knot on the adjacent plank, and the board popped up with a soft click.
Inside lay a thick, manila envelope.
