Chapter 7 - The Traitor Beside the Throne
No one moved.
Rafael held his gun steady.
Mateo faced him without raising his hands.
“You had twelve years,” Mateo said quietly. “Why now?”
Rafael’s face twisted.
“Because Esperanza’s grandson should have stayed dead.”
Valeria stared at him.
“You helped us find Aurelio.”
“I helped Lucio watch him.”
My mind raced backward.
Rafael had been in the SUV when someone revealed our destination.
Rafael knew about the station.
Rafael knew the location of the prison.
But he had also saved us.
“You shot Lucio,” I said.
“To keep him from killing the boy before Esteban got the ledger.”
Lucio pressed a hand against his bleeding shoulder.
“You always were sentimental, Rafael.”
Rafael glanced at him with hatred.
“I did what was necessary.”
“For whom?” Mateo asked.
“For my family.”
His voice cracked.
“Esteban has my wife and son.”
Silence fell.
Mateo’s expression changed.
“How long?”
“Eleven years.”
Valeria lowered her rifle slightly.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because he sent me one photograph every month. Each photograph showed them alive. Each came with an order.”
Rafael looked at me.
“I told him Esperanza survived the fire. I told him she had hidden the child. I helped him search.”
My stomach turned.
“You led them to my grandmother.”
“No.”
“You said you watched us.”
“I found her six months ago. I saw how she protected you. I could not give him your location.”
“Then how did Lucio find her?”
Rafael looked at Captain Salazar, who had been carried into the room by Mateo’s men.
The wounded police officer lowered his head.
“I followed Rafael,” Salazar admitted.
My anger became too large for my body.
“You killed her.”
Salazar shook his head.
“I told Lucio where she lived. I did not know he would poison her medicine.”
The world tilted.
Grandmother had died slowly.
The doctor called it heart failure. Her hands shook. Her breathing weakened. She apologized because she could no longer work.
They had poisoned her.
Lucio smiled through his pain.
“She was difficult to kill. Even at the end.”
I lunged at him.
Mateo caught me around the chest.
“Let me go!”
Lucio laughed.
“Listen to him. A little wolf.”
My father raised the pistol from the floor.
His hand trembled.
“Do not call my son that.”
Lucio’s smile faded.
Gabriel fired.
The bullet struck Lucio in the leg.
He screamed and collapsed.
Rafael’s gun remained aimed at Mateo.
“Esteban is escaping,” Valeria said. “We are wasting time.”
Rafael’s eyes filled with tears.
“If I let you follow him, my family dies.”
Mateo took one step forward.
“Give me the gun.”
“I cannot.”
“You served beside me for twenty-three years.”
“I betrayed you for eleven.”
“And still you came through that door.”
Rafael’s arm began to shake.
Mateo moved closer.
“You could have shot me. You did not.”
“He will kill them.”
“Then we find them first.”
“You cannot promise that.”
“No,” Mateo said. “But I can promise that Esteban will never own you again.”
Rafael closed his eyes.
The gun lowered.
Valeria immediately took it from him.
Mateo did not order his execution.
Instead, he told two guards to restrain him and keep him alive.
That mercy shocked everyone.
Perhaps even Mateo himself.
We escaped the building minutes before fire consumed the lower rooms. Esteban had planted explosives to destroy his records and prisoners.
Gabriel survived the journey to the estate, though the bullet had passed dangerously close to his lung.
I sat beside him while Doctor Elena prepared for surgery.
He reached for my hand.
“I thought about you every day.”
I wanted to believe him.
I also wanted to scream at him for being absent, even though chains had kept him away.
“Grandmother said you died protecting us.”
“She needed you to stop searching.”
“I was a baby.”
“She knew what kind of boy you would become.”
“How?”
“She knew your heart.”
His fingers tightened weakly.
“Listen to me. The ledger is not a book anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Esperanza separated it.”
Doctor Elena entered with the surgical team.
Gabriel spoke faster.
“She copied the evidence onto film. Three rolls. One is beneath her grave. One is hidden inside the old Sun Theater. The final roll—”
His eyes closed.
“Papa?”
The machines began beeping.
Elena pushed me away as nurses surrounded him.
“Get the boy out!”
Mateo pulled me into the hallway.
Through the closing doors, I heard Elena order the surgeons to begin.
I waited for two hours.
No one spoke.
At dawn, Elena emerged.
“Your father survived.”
My knees weakened with relief.
“But he lost a great deal of blood,” she continued. “He may not wake for some time.”
“He was telling me where the final film was.”
Mateo looked toward the guarded surgical room.
“Then we must find the other two.”
Captain Salazar was brought into the study.
Under questioning, he confessed that Esteban planned to raid my grandmother’s grave before sunrise.
We arrived at San Marcos Cemetery under heavy rain.
The grave had already been opened.
The coffin rested crookedly beside the hole.
I ran toward it.
Mateo caught my shoulder, but I pulled away.
The lid stood open.
My grandmother lay beneath a white burial cloth.
Her silver cross was gone.
A message had been carved into the inside of the coffin.
Bring the boy to the Sun Theater before midnight.
Below the words lay a freshly severed finger wearing a wedding ring.
May you like
Rafael saw the ring and collapsed.
It belonged to his wife.
