Tomás stepped back slightly, confused, almost frightened.
I walked toward the first vehicle. The leader of the group, a tall man with a sharp gaze, opened the door for me, bowing his head in respect.
“Mrs. Hall, we are at your service,” he said.
Mrs. Hall. Not Llorente. Hall. My birth name, the one my father always wanted me to wear with pride.
In that instant, I understood that my life had just changed forever. My father hadn’t just left me his memory; he’d left me a secret inheritance, carefully guarded from those who could manipulate or use me.
As Tomás watched from the sidewalk, his face contorted with grief, I knew that what was coming wasn’t the end of an era…
It was the true beginning.
The men who had come to the funeral escorted me to the family home in the Sarrià neighborhood, a spacious residence that Tomás had always envied. I never dared bring him there when my father was alive; Richard preferred to keep his distance from him from the first time he met him.
The group’s leader, Gabriel Knox, handed me a black folder.
“Your father instructed us to give this to you as soon as he passed away,” he explained.
My heart raced. I carefully opened the folder. Inside were bank documents, deeds to properties in Barcelona, Málaga, and London, and a letter written in my father’s unmistakable handwriting.
