Tito Anton did not dramatize the story when he told it to me.
If anything, he stripped it of drama.
He corrected details more than he embellished them. Dates. Exact positions in the room. Which hand held the phone. He seemed less concerned with how the story sounded and more concerned with whether it was accurate. Still, there were pauses he did not account for. Small silences that felt deliberate.
This is my reconstruction of that afternoon, based entirely on what he admitted.
✦✧✦
Charlotte arrived during clinic hours.
The waiting area had been full. Soft murmurs, the rustle of paper gowns, the distant chime of a monitor from another room. But when she was escorted into his office, the door closed with a quiet, padded click that sealed them into a different kind of silence.
Dr. Borres did not look like a man who believed in fragile things.
He was tall, broad across the shoulders, his posture straight without visible effort. The kind of presence that made patients lower their voices instinctively, as if the air around him required discipline. Sparse hair thinned across his scalp, retreating without apology, but his beard was carefully maintained, dense and deliberate. Nothing about him was careless. Not the crease of his sleeves. Not the angle of his chair. Professional. Intentional.
He told me she studied him openly.
Not rudely. Not shyly either. As if she were searching for resemblance and refusing to blink until she found it.
"There isn't any," he said he told her, his tone even. "If you're looking for physical similarities between me and my cousin, you won't find them."
The office smelled faintly of disinfectant. Not sharp enough to sting the nose. Just clean. Controlled. The air conditioning hummed steadily above them, a low mechanical breath that filled the space between sentences.
"And from what I know," he continued, settling back into his chair, fingers folding neatly over his desk, "my cousin did marry your mother. The marriage ended as quickly as propofol induces unconsciousness."
He said it clinically. The way he explains sedation to patients before a procedure. Precise. Detached. Almost instructional.
She did not smile.
"Can you start from the beginning?" she asked. Her voice, he told me, was steady. "From how they met. Mr. Cottin mentioned it was in the nineties."
"I take it Mr. Cottin is the private investigator you hired."
"Yes."
He admitted he considered ending the conversation there. It would have been easy. Cite confidentiality. Invoke professional distance. Stand, escort her out, return to his charts.
Instead, he stood.
He noticed her posture change the moment he did. Shoulders tightening. Chin lifting slightly. Her eyes sharpened, tracking his movement with quiet calculation.
"I'm reaching for my phone, Miss Moreau," he clarified calmly. "There's no need to escalate your pulse."
She did not sit back down.
"I hope you're aware of the penalties for dishonoring an NDA, Dr. Borres," she said.
He remembered that line clearly. He told me she delivered it without raising her voice. No theatrics. Just a statement laid carefully on the table between them.
"I am fully aware of contractual obligations," he replied. "Which is precisely why I will not violate them."
He picked up his work phone from the desk. The screen lit briefly against the muted light of the room.
"I'm going to attempt to contact the person you're looking for."
"Dr. Kimberly Morales."
"My cousin, yes."
He emphasized to me that the device he handed Charlotte was his clinic phone. Calls made from it were routed through hospital systems. Logged. Timestamped. Accountable.
His personal phone remained in his pocket.
The line rang.
He told me he watched her watching the screen. The way her gaze fixed on the caller ID as if it might reveal something before the voice did.
Before the call could connect, there was a knock at the door. A nurse, polite but firm, reminding him about a meeting with department heads. Administrative. Mandatory. Already delayed.
He weighed his options in the span of a breath.
Then he handed her the phone.
"You may speak to Dr. Morales using my work line," he said. "It records nothing. But it does log the duration. I trust you understand boundaries."
She took it. Her fingers closed around the device with controlled steadiness.
He left the office.
He did not linger in the hallway.
He walked directly to the adjacent monitoring room where the CCTV feeds were displayed across a bank of muted screens. Fluorescent light washed the room in a pale, almost sterile glow. He told me he selected the camera covering his office and watched it in real time.
Not to eavesdrop, he insisted.
There was no audio on the feed. Only video.
He switched his personal phone to silent before slipping it back into his pocket.
On the monitor, Charlotte stood alone in his office, the clinic phone pressed tightly to her ear. The desk, the chairs, the framed certifications behind her. Everything looked ordinary. Controlled.
The first call ended.
He saw her pull the phone away, glance at the screen, and dial again immediately. No hesitation this time.
She saved the number into her own phone before redialing. He noticed that detail. Her movements were quick but measured, efficient without appearing frantic.
When the second call connected, her body went still.
Completely still.
From the monitor, he could not hear Kim's voice. He could only see Charlotte's side of the exchange. The slight movement of her lips. The tightening around her eyes.
He watched her speak.
"Have you ever known a woman named Élisabeth Lorraine?"
He told me there was a pause long enough for him to glance at the corner of the screen, checking whether the call timer was still running.
Charlotte did not move.
Then her shoulders tensed. Subtle, but undeniable.
She listened.
Her fingers curled more firmly around the phone, knuckles paling.
"I'm her daughter," she said.
He read the words from her lips before he fully processed them.
"My name is Charlotte Moreau."
He told me that was when her composure shifted. Not dramatically. No collapse. No tears. But something in her face tightened, as though she had braced for impact and finally felt it. Her jaw set. Her breathing became visible in the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
He still could not hear his cousin, Kim.
He only saw Charlotte listening.
Then she spoke again. A longer sentence this time. He did not repeat those words to me, and I did not press him.
I asked him what Kim's reaction had been.
He looked at me the same way he must have looked at her in his office. Measured. Unmoved.
"There's no audio on the office cameras, Jane," he said. "Only liability."
He returned to the room several minutes later.
By then, the call had ended.
Charlotte stood where he had left her. The phone was no longer at her ear. Her expression had been composed again, he said, but the air in the room felt altered. As if something invisible had shifted its weight.
She handed him back his work phone without looking at him.
He did not ask what was said.
She did not volunteer it.
That was how the first conversation between them began.