Chapter 7 - THE HOUSEKEEPER’S CONFESSION
Alejandro found Doña Socorro in the chapel.
She was kneeling beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary.
“You let him go.”
She didn’t turn around.
“Yes.”
Two guards raised their weapons.
Alejandro lifted his hand.
“Why?”
Socorro began crying.
“He has my daughter.”
Valeria stepped closer.
“What?”
“Dr. Vega.”
Socorro faced them.
“My daughter Elena disappeared nine months ago.”
Alejandro frowned.
“You told me she moved to Guadalajara.”
“That is what they told me to say.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Vega.”
Her voice broke.
“And Don Rafael.”
Alejandro looked like he had been punched.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Because they showed me photographs of her tied to a chair.”
Valeria covered her mouth.
“They said if I told you anything, she would disappear forever.”
“What did they make you do?”
Socorro looked toward Mateo’s bedroom.
“Keep the north wing locked.”
Alejandro stepped closer.
“What else?”
“Make sure Mateo took the medicine.”
Valeria’s stomach turned.
“What medicine?”
“I don’t know.”
“You gave drugs to my son?” Alejandro shouted.
Socorro collapsed against the pew.
“I thought it was treatment!”
“Every night?”
“No. Only when Dr. Vega called.”
“How often?”
“Two or three times a week.”
Valeria remembered Mateo’s red button drawing.
Needles.
Sedation.
“Why?”
Socorro wept.
“He said the boy became dangerous at night.”
Valeria shook her head.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“They weren’t calming him.”
“What?”
“They were making sure he couldn’t tell anyone what he remembered.”
Alejandro’s face darkened.
Socorro nodded slowly.
“There’s more.”
She reached beneath the chapel bench.
She pulled out a key.
“I stole this from Rafael last month.”
Alejandro recognized it.
“Lucía’s desk.”
Socorro nodded.
“She kept a second journal in a false drawer.”
They rushed upstairs.
Inside Lucía’s old office, Alejandro inserted the key.
A hidden compartment opened beneath the desk.
Inside was a black notebook.
Lucía had written dates.
Account numbers.
Names.
But the last five pages were different.
They were about Mateo.
He keeps waking up screaming.
He keeps saying Uncle Rafael was in the car behind us.
Alejandro stopped reading.
Valeria took the journal.
Another line.
Mateo says Rafael told him, “If you tell Papa, Papa dies too.”
Alejandro sank into the chair.
His own brother.
The man who had stood beside him at Lucía’s funeral.
The man who had carried Mateo’s coffin-sized grief through the church.
The man Alejandro had trusted with his son.
Valeria turned one more page.
A photograph fell out.
It showed Rafael and Dr. Vega standing beside a warehouse.
Between them stood a third man.
Security chief Calderón.
Valeria looked toward the hallway.
“Where is Calderón?”
Alejandro reached for his phone.
May you like
Too late.
The lights went out.
