Chapter 3 - THE MOTHER WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
Júlia learned about the photograph from Camila, not from Dante.
The lawyer called after the police interview and told her that Davi had contacted investigators with information about the restaurant's missing dishes. He was frightened and had asked that his name remain confidential until a formal witness-protection plan was discussed.
“Is he safe?” Júlia asked.
“The detective is working on it.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“It's the most accurate one I can give.”
Júlia thought of Davi's quick, frightened glance in the kitchen. A man with a daughter had been asked to risk more than his job. She wished she had a way to tell him not to take any risks for her.
Her own life had already become unrecognizable. She was unemployed, a central witness in a suspected poisoning, and now the police wanted to reopen questions about her mother's death. Even the street outside her apartment seemed changed. Every parked car looked like it might contain someone waiting.
Camila arranged for Júlia to collect Beatriz's hospital records from the public archive. The file was thick and worn at the edges. It contained nursing notes, laboratory reports, and the final account of a woman whose body had stopped responding to treatment.
Júlia sat in Camila's office and read the pages one by one.
Her mother had worked for Santa Lúcia Facilities, a contractor that cleaned industrial sites along the river. On the day she became ill, she had returned home complaining of dizziness, a terrible headache, and a metallic taste. By evening she was having trouble breathing. Júlia, then twenty-one, had called an ambulance.
The hospital had suspected an industrial chemical exposure. An occupational-health report was requested, but the employer had declared no incident. Beatriz's condition worsened. She died twelve days later.
In the file, attached to a consultation note, was a name Júlia had never noticed before.
Dr. Gabriel Farias — external industrial adviser.
She stared at it.
“Farias,” she whispered.
Camila leaned over. “What?”
“The man at the restaurant. His name was Vicente Farias.”
“It's a common enough surname. We shouldn't assume a connection.”
“Then find out.”
They sent a formal records request to the company and asked Detective Almeida to check the adviser's credentials. Within hours, Renata confirmed that Dr. Gabriel Farias was Vicente's cousin. He had once been employed by a consulting firm retained by the warehouses, then moved abroad after a disciplinary inquiry.
Júlia sat motionless as the detective explained.
“Your mother may have had information about conditions at the facility. We're not concluding that yet. We need records of her work assignments and any complaints she filed.”
“I was told the accident was nobody's fault.”
“Sometimes a record is incomplete. Sometimes someone makes it incomplete. We have to determine which.”
That week, Júlia visited the health clinic where her mother had first been examined. The nurse who had worked there five years earlier had retired, but a receptionist remembered Beatriz because she had returned several times with other employees.
“She used to come here with people from the same job,” the receptionist said. “Sometimes she translated the forms for them. Sometimes she sat in the waiting room because they were too frightened to come alone.”
Júlia had always known her mother was generous. She had not realized how much of her final months Beatriz spent trying to help coworkers whose symptoms were being dismissed as stress or exhaustion.
“Did she ever mention anyone from the company?” Júlia asked.
The receptionist shook her head. “I don't remember names. But I do remember she asked whether a worker could request records without being fired.”
Júlia felt tears rise. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her to talk to the occupational-health office. She said she'd already tried.”
On the bus home, Júlia imagined her mother gathering papers after shifts, trying to understand words from laboratory reports and workplace regulations while preparing dinner and helping Tomás with schoolwork. The memory brought love and anger in equal measure. Beatriz had been carrying a fight her children did not even know existed.
When Tomás heard about the clinic, he found an old workbook filled with their mother's handwritten calculations. Beatriz had been helping him learn fractions, using recipe measurements as examples. Tucked inside was a folded note with three names, dates, and the words “work complaints” underlined.
“Another list?” he asked.
“Maybe the same people from the clinic.”
They gave the note to Camila the next morning. She photographed it and asked for the original to be stored safely. One of the names matched a woman who had filed a claim after a warehouse exposure. Another belonged to a former night-shift cleaner who had moved away. The third was a man whose death certificate listed a respiratory condition.
The possibility that Beatriz was not the only person harmed made Júlia feel less alone and more furious. Her mother had not been unlucky in some isolated accident. She might have been one of several people whose warnings were ignored.
That night, Júlia dreamed she was back in the hospital. Beatriz was speaking, but the monitor was too loud for her to hear. She woke with her heart racing and called Tomás's name. He answered from the next room, sleepy and annoyed.
“I'm here,” he said.
She lay back and listened to his breathing through the thin apartment wall. He was still here. Whatever happened next, she would keep trying to make sure he had a future.
That evening, Dante was discharged from the hospital under strict medical follow-up. He returned not to his usual mansion but to a secure apartment where his physician could monitor him. He disliked being treated like a patient. Rafael disliked having nearly watched him die.
“You're supposed to rest,” Rafael said as Dante examined the evidence photographs.
“Rest won't identify who tried to poison me.”
“The police will.”
“Then give them whatever they need.”
Rafael looked up. “You want me to hand over our internal surveillance?”
“All of it that relates to that night. No edited clips. No missing minutes.”
Rafael was quiet for a moment. “Your father would never have allowed that.”
“My father isn't the one who nearly died at table four.”
Dante placed a photograph of Júlia on the desk. It was the image from her employment file, taken against a plain wall, her hair tied back and her face tired but open.
“What's the connection to her mother?”
“Police are investigating. Her mother worked at a warehouse connected to Farias's suppliers.”
Dante frowned. “Which warehouse?”
“Santa Lúcia.”
He stood too quickly and gripped the desk until the dizziness passed.
“Dante?”
“Bring me the old acquisition files.”
Five years earlier, Dante's company had considered purchasing the Santa Lúcia site. The transaction collapsed after an inspection revealed unexplained chemical storage and altered safety certificates. Dante had refused to sign. His father, who was alive then, had called him naïve.
Vicente Farias acquired the property through intermediaries six months later.
Dante remembered the argument exactly. Vicente had laughed and said abandoned warehouses were useful because nobody cared what happened inside them.
Now Beatriz Nascimento had died after working there, and her daughter had happened to be the only person in a crowded room who recognized Dante's symptoms.
It could have been coincidence.
Dante had survived long enough to know coincidences often deserved a second look.
Júlia, meanwhile, returned to the old neighborhood where her mother had worked. The Santa Lúcia warehouses stood behind rusted fences near a narrow river channel. Many windows were boarded. Trucks moved through a nearby loading yard, but the old cleaning entrance was closed.
She did not go inside. Camila had warned her against trespassing or approaching anyone who might be involved. Instead, she stood across the road and remembered the last time her mother had walked out of the gate: pale, exhausted, trying to smile because Júlia had brought Tomás to meet her.
“Let's go home,” Beatriz had said. “I'll tell you something when I feel better.”
She never had.
Júlia began to cry quietly, the traffic moving behind her.
A woman selling coffee from a cart looked at her. “You knew someone who worked there?”
“My mother.”
The woman nodded. “A lot of people got sick. They told us the smell came from old pipes. We stopped believing that.”
“Did you ever report it?”
“We tried.”
“Who took the reports?”
The woman looked toward the warehouse gates. “A man from the company. He always wore a blue-faced watch. I remember it because it was broken and he never had it repaired.”
Júlia felt her heart stop.
“Was his name Vicente?”
The woman's face closed.
“I've said enough.”
Júlia stepped back. “I'm sorry.”
She walked toward the bus stop without looking behind her. Only when she reached the shelter did she call Camila. She described the conversation as carefully as she could, making no claim beyond what she had heard.
“Go home,” Camila told her. “I'll inform the detective. Please don't question anyone else on your own.”
“I wasn't trying to.”
“I know. But someone who was willing to endanger a crowded restaurant may not stop at intimidation.”
By the time Júlia reached her apartment, Tomás was at the table with his laptop open. He had found a set of old public company records for Santa Lúcia Facilities.
“Júlia,” he said, “you need to see this.”
“What?”
“The cleaning contractor got a settlement after Mom died. Not us. The company.”
He turned the screen toward her.
The public filing showed a confidential insurance payment connected to an environmental incident. The date was eleven days after Beatriz died. The recipient was a holding company later purchased by Farias Logistics.
“How much?” Júlia whispered.
Tomás swallowed.
“Almost three million reais.”
May you like
Júlia sat down slowly.
Their mother had died, and someone else had been paid to make the problem go away.
