Chapter 6 — Female Lawyer and Torn Will

Duy Bach arranged an official meeting with Ms. Sau Cam at the police station on Wednesday morning, with the official reason being to take additional testimony related to the break-in at the lawyer's office. But both he and Tue Minh understood that the real purpose of this meeting was much deeper - they needed the old housekeeper to break forty years of silence.

Ms. Sau Cam walked into the small office with a visibly tense look, her hands clasped tightly together on her thighs as she sat down in the chair opposite the desk. “I really don't know anything about that break-in,” she said as soon as she sat down, her voice shaking. "I'm just a maid, not involved in such big things."

"We do not suspect you of being involved in the break-in, Mrs. Cam," Tue Minh said softly, trying to ease the tense atmosphere. "But we believe that you know a lot about the Dam family that you have never shared, and that those things could be important in saving an innocent person from false suspicion, and for an important truth to be revealed."

Ms. Sau Cam was silent for a long time, her eyes looking down at her own shaking hands. "My grandfather told me before he died," she said at last, her voice choking. "He said, if something happened to him before he could announce the new will, I had to keep quiet until someone who really needed to know the truth asked. I thought, maybe it was lawyer Doan, or Mr. Vu himself. I didn't think it would be this complicated and dangerous."

"So now, are you ready to tell the truth?" Duy Bach asked, his voice both serious and full of respect for the older woman who was struggling with her old promise.

Mrs. Sau Cam took a deep breath, as if mentally preparing herself for the most important decision in her forty years of serving the Dam family. "Mr. Viet and Ms. Diem fell in love when they were in college," she began, her voice gradually becoming more certain as old memories came flooding back. "They secretly got married, hiding it from the old man because they knew he would not accept a girl from an ordinary background as his daughter-in-law, especially when he was placing a lot of hope on Mr. Viet to succeed the group."

"How did Mr. Vinh Thanh discover that?" Tue Minh asked, carefully recording every detail.

"The old lady - the old man's wife - found out first, and kept it a secret for her son for a while," Ms. Sau Cam continued. "But after the old lady died from an illness, the old man became more and more strict, and he finally discovered the truth when Ms. Diem was pregnant. He became extremely angry, demanding that Mr. Viet immediately annul the marriage, otherwise he would be completely stripped of his inheritance rights."

"And Mr. Viet did not yield," Duy Bach guessed, his voice low.

"That's right," Ms. Sau Cam nodded, her eyes filled with tears. "He chose love, just like Ms. Nha later. He moved out to live alone with Ms. Diem, living a simple life, away from the family's wealth. The old man was so angry that he announced that he would disown him and not allow anyone in the family to mention his name anymore."

"So what about Mr. Hung - Quoc Hung - how does he react to this?" Tue Minh asked, a strong premonition was gradually forming in her mind.

Ms. Sau Cam's face suddenly darkened, a flash of fear flashed in her eyes. "Mr. Hung was very... happy at that time, even though he tried to hide it in front of everyone," she said, her voice lowered to a whisper even though there were only three people in the room. "With Mr. Viet being disowned, Mr. Hung became the sole heir, there was no one left to compete for the position of successor of the group."

"Do you think Quoc Hung had anything to do with Quoc Viet's death two years later?" Duy Bach asked directly, his eyes never leaving the old housekeeper's face.

Ms. Sau Cam trembled, her hands covering her face for a moment before looking up, her eyes red from the tears she had held back for twenty-five years. "I don't have any concrete evidence," she said, her voice shaking but fierce. "But I remember, the night before Mr. Viet died, Mr. Hung came to meet Mr. Viet at their small rented house. I know because I was the one who gave Mr. Hung the address, following the orders of the old man, who wanted to try one last time to convince Mr. Viet to return."

"Do you know how that meeting went?" Tue Minh asked, her voice tense.

"I wasn't there," Ms. Sau Cam replied. "But the next morning, when Mr. Hung returned home, I saw that he seemed very restless and unusual. And just a few hours later, we received news that Mr. Viet had an accident on the way back from a long business trip. I always suspected that it was a coincidence, but I didn't dare say it out loud, for fear of getting involved, and because I didn't have any specific evidence - just the hunch of a woman who had lived in that house for too long to not notice anything unusual."

This information, although just speculation based on a hunch, has opened up a potential new direction of investigation. Duy Bach took careful notes and planned to compare them with Quoc Hung's travel records that night, if he could still find them after all these years.

"What about Mr. Vinh Thanh and Mr. Vu's mother?" Tue Minh asked again, wanting to clarify the rest of the story. "Do you know why he personally recruited Mr. Vu to work?"

"After Uncle Viet died, the old man fell into a state of terrible torment," Ms. Sau Cam continued, her voice softening. "He secretly came to Ms. Diem, wanting to financially support her and her grandson, but Ms. Diem refused, saying that she did not want her child to grow up in a family that abandoned her husband to death. The old man could only silently watch from afar, through me, the person he trusted to keep in contact discreetly."

"So when Ms. Diem died, why didn't she take Mr. Vu home to raise him, but instead waited until he was older to personally recruit him to the company?" Tue Minh asked, feeling there was still a gap in the story.

"The boy was adopted by a distant relative of Ms. Diem after she passed away, and the old man respected Ms. Diem's last wish that the boy not know about the Dam family until he was old enough to make his own decisions," Ms. Sau Cam explained. "He only silently watched, supporting tuition through an anonymous scholarship fund, until Mr. Vu turned eighteen years old. After that, he found a way to bring him closer to him, in the name of a normal employee, to have time to observe and learn about him before deciding to reveal the truth."

"And he decided to make that truth public in his new will," Tue Minh concluded, all the pieces of the puzzle now almost complete in her mind. "Do you know that he plans to talk directly to Mr. Vu before announcing the will?"

Ms. Sau Cam nodded. "He told me that he planned to talk to Mr. Vu the weekend after the will was officially announced, wanting him to hear the truth from his own mouth, not from cold legal documents. But he passed away before he could do that."

The testimony session ended with a huge amount of information that Tue Minh and Duy Bach needed to process. When seeing Mrs. Sau Cam leave, Tue Minh held her hand, her eyes full of sincere sympathy. "Thank you, ma'am, for having the courage to speak the truth. I know it wasn't easy, after all these years of keeping quiet."

"I just hope that this truth will help Mr. Vu get what should have belonged to him a long time ago, and help Ms. Nha escape from unjust suspicions," Ms. Sau Cam replied, her voice much lighter than when she first entered. "I've carried this burden for too long, Miss Minh."

After Ms. Sau Cam left, Duy Bach turned to look at Tue Minh, his eyes full of seriousness. "We now have enough basis to request a deeper investigation into Quoc Hung's movements on the night Quoc Viet died, and also about the possibility that he knew the contents of the new will before it was torn up," he said. "But we need to be careful — this is still just indirect testimony, based on the memory and hunch of an elderly person. We need more specific, physical evidence."

"I think the next step should be a DNA test to officially confirm the blood relationship between Anh Vu and the Dam family," Tue Minh proposed. "That will strengthen the legal foundation for restoring the will's content, regardless of whether we find out who is behind the will tearing and Quoc Viet's death."

"I agree," Duy Bach said. "But we need to do this discreetly, avoiding letting Quoc Hung or Kim Yen know in advance, lest they find a way to intervene or put pressure on Anh Vu to refuse to cooperate."

That afternoon, Tue Minh decided to meet Dam Anh Vu herself, not as an investigating lawyer, but with the sincerity of someone who wanted to help him better understand his own true origin - a truth that she believed that, no matter how painful, he deserved to know.