Chapter 5 - The Prisoner Without a Name
Lucio escaped before Mateo’s men could surround him.
He left behind three wounded soldiers, a burning truck, and one sentence that shattered everything I believed about my life.
My father was alive.
Mateo refused to discuss it until we returned to the estate.
I refused to remain silent.
“Where is he?”
“I do not know.”
“You’re lying.”
“I do not know where he is now.”
“That means you knew before.”
Mateo turned on me in the center of the courtyard.
Every guard nearby stopped moving.
“Your father’s name is Gabriel Mendoza,” he said. “Twelve years ago, he worked for my brother Esteban.”
“What kind of work?”
“The kind that stains a man’s hands.”
I thought of my grandmother calling my father brave. I thought of the few memories I had been given: a young man who sang while cooking, who carried flowers home for no reason, who died protecting his family.
“Grandmother said he was a mechanic.”
“He repaired vehicles. He also drove them for Esteban.”
“Did he kill people?”
Mateo’s silence answered me.
I stepped back.
“No.”
“He tried to leave that life when you were born. Esteban did not allow men to leave.”
“So he burned our house?”
“Gabriel learned about the stolen accounts and helped Esperanza copy the evidence. Esteban ordered the fire.”
“But my father survived.”
“We found no body matching him.”
“You found three bodies.”
“One was never identified.”
The courtyard blurred.
My family had not simply been attacked.
Someone had replaced the bodies to make the city believe we were dead.
“Why would Lucio keep my father alive?”
“To find the ledger.”
Mateo led me into the mansion’s underground security room. Valeria and Rafael followed.
A map covered one wall. Mateo pointed to an abandoned prison beyond the western factories.
“Years ago, political prisoners were held here,” he said. “Lucio now uses the lower levels for men who cannot officially exist.”
“You think my father is there.”
“I think he was there six months ago.”
“How do you know?”
Rafael placed a photograph on the table.
A thin man stood behind a barred window. His face was partly hidden, but his eyes were unmistakable.
Mine.
The date was printed in the corner.
Six months before my grandmother died.
“She knew,” I whispered.
Mateo nodded.
“She spent years trying to locate him.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because hope can be more dangerous than grief.”
I hated that answer because it sounded like something she might have said.
Valeria leaned over the map.
“If Lucio showed Aurelio the photograph, he wants us to go to the prison.”
“It is a trap,” Rafael said.
“Then we know where the trap is.”
Mateo looked at Valeria.
“No.”
“I did not ask permission.”
“You will stay here.”
“So Aurelio can go?”
“He will stay too.”
I stood.
“No.”
Mateo turned toward me.
“My father is there.”
“Perhaps.”
“If you lock me in that room again, I’ll climb out another window.”
“I will remove the windows.”
“I’ll dig through the wall.”
Rafael coughed into his fist.
Mateo stared at me for several seconds.
“You are either brave or foolish.”
“Grandmother said those are sometimes the same thing.”
The rescue began before dawn.
Mateo took twelve men. Rafael drove the lead vehicle. Valeria was ordered to remain at the estate, so she hid beneath a blanket in the supply truck.
No one discovered her until we reached the prison.
Mateo looked ready to throw her over the wall himself.
There was no time.
The outer gates stood open.
No guards waited in the towers.
Inside, the corridors smelled of rust and damp stone. Doors hung from broken hinges. Rats moved behind the walls.
We found blood on the stairs leading underground.
“Recent,” Rafael said.
The cells below were empty.
All except one.
A man sat chained to a chair under a single lamp.
He was not my father.
Captain Salazar, the city’s most respected police officer, lifted his bruised face.
“Mateo,” he whispered. “You should not have come.”
A metal door slammed behind us.
Gas hissed from vents in the ceiling.
Men began coughing.
Mateo covered my mouth with his sleeve.
“Find another exit!”
Valeria kicked at the nearest cell door. Rafael fired at the lock.
Captain Salazar laughed weakly.
“He wanted the boy alive.”
“Who?” Mateo demanded.
Salazar looked at me.
“Esteban.”
The name seemed to make the air colder.
Mateo’s older brother had disappeared eleven years earlier. Some said he had died. Others said he had fled the country.
Mateo had never said he might still be alive.
The gas thickened.
My vision blurred.
Through the haze, a hidden panel opened behind Captain Salazar.
A man wearing a white mask entered.
He walked directly toward me.
Mateo fired, but the man dragged me behind the panel before the bullet reached him.
The wall closed.
I fought, kicked, and bit his hand.
He struck me once.
Darkness swallowed the corridor.
The last thing I heard was Mateo roaring my name.
When I woke, I was inside a moving vehicle.
My wrists were tied.
Across from me sat Lucio Serrano.
Beside him was an older man with silver hair and a burn scar covering half his face.
He looked like Mateo.
But his eyes held none of Mateo’s restraint.
“I have waited twelve years to meet you,” he said.
He leaned forward.
“My name is Esteban Vargas.”
May you like
Then he smiled.
“And your grandmother ruined my life.”
