Julian had been a contractor who occasionally worked for an Albright property company.
He needed money.
Regina needed someone outside the family circle.
She offered him almost the same arrangement she later offered me.
No love.
No questions.
One year.
“Did you fall in love with him too?” I asked.
Regina shook her head.
“No.
Julian became my friend.
And then he found something he wasn’t supposed to find.”
Julian’s mother opened the envelope again.
This time she removed copies of invoices and bank transfers.
For almost two years, money had been moving from Albright subsidiaries into companies that existed mostly on paper.
The transfers were disguised as consulting, security, and vendor expenses.
The approvals led back to Patrick.
Julian had stumbled onto the records while helping Regina move files before a family audit.
At first Regina thought it was ordinary corporate waste.
Then Julian found the same vendor names attached to properties Patrick personally controlled.
“He wanted to go to the authorities,” Regina said.
“I told him to wait until we had enough proof.”
Julian’s mother stared at her.
“You told him to wait because you were afraid of losing the company.”
Regina accepted the accusation without defending herself.
“Yes.”
That single word carried more shame than a speech could have.
The night Julian confronted Patrick privately, he called his mother afterward.
He told her Patrick knew about the files.
He also told her something stranger.
A few hours after the confrontation, Julian discovered the small bruise near his neck and felt disoriented.
He couldn’t explain where the mark came from.
Two days later, his car left the road on his way to meet an outside accountant.
He died before reaching the hospital.
The crash was ruled an accident.
But Julian’s mother refused to believe it.
A later review of his medical samples found a sedating substance that had not appeared in the first summary given to the family.
Nothing by itself proved murder.
The bruise didn’t prove who had caused it.
The financial records didn’t prove Patrick had touched Julian.
Together, however, they were enough to make Regina afraid.
“That’s why you kept his photograph,” I said.
“Yes.”
“The locked room?”
“His files.
Copies of everything he found.”
“The calls you kept ending when I walked in?”
Regina looked toward Julian’s mother.
“Her.”
My eyes fell to the medication box I had once found Regina clutching on the kitchen floor.
She understood the question before I asked it.
“Panic attacks,” she said quietly.
“They started after Julian died.”
Every secret suddenly had an explanation.
That didn’t make the lies disappear.
“And me?” I asked.
