Chapter 10 - The Second Heir
The silence inside the Founder's Room felt heavier than stone.
Mateo read the note again.
He isn't your only uncle.
The words refused to make sense.
Richard slowly removed the pocket watch from Mateo's hand.
He turned it over carefully.
"I've seen this before."
Every eye turned toward him.
Mateo frowned.
"My father carried it every day."
Richard nodded.
"He did."
"But it wasn't originally his."
He opened the watch once more.
"There used to be two identical watches."
"One for each son."
Mateo's heartbeat quickened.
"My father only had one brother."
Richard looked down.
"That's what the family announced."
Elena watched the exchange in silence.
She could see decades of certainty unraveling in Mateo's eyes.
"What really happened?"
Richard hesitated.
Then he sighed.
"Forty-five years ago, your grandfather made a decision."
"He believed one of his sons would never be accepted as the future of the company."
"So he erased him from the public record."
Mateo stared at him.
"Erased?"
"The birth records were amended."
"Family photographs disappeared."
"Legal documents were rewritten."
"The official history became... simpler."
Lawson folded his arms.
"So Samuel wasn't the only brother."
"No."
Richard answered quietly.
"There were three."
The room fell silent.
Mateo felt as though the ground had shifted beneath him.
"My father never told me."
"I don't believe he knew the entire truth."
Richard walked toward one of the oldest filing cabinets.
He searched through several leather-bound ledgers before stopping.
"There."
He carefully removed a faded family register.
Dust drifted into the air as he opened it.
The first pages contained handwritten entries dating back nearly eighty years.
Births.
Marriages.
Deaths.
Then Richard stopped on a page that had been partially torn away.
Someone had deliberately removed an entire section.
But not completely.
One line remained visible.
Children of Alejandro Rivera:
Samuel.
Gabriel.
The third name had been cut away.
Only the first letter remained.
L...
Elena leaned closer.
"They destroyed the record."
"They tried."
Richard replied.
"But whoever did it missed this page."
Mateo studied the faded ink.
"L."
He whispered.
"Who was he?"
No one answered.
Daniel's voice suddenly came through the emergency radio.
The signal was weak but clear.
"Mateo."
"I'm reading you."
"Sofia is safe."
Relief crossed Elena's face.
Daniel continued.
"But we've discovered something."
"What?"
"The security system recognized Sofia."
Mateo frowned.
"It should."
"No."
Daniel's voice became more serious.
"It recognized her under a different profile."
Silence filled the archive.
"What profile?"
Daniel hesitated.
"The system identifies her as..."
"...Primary Family Successor."
Richard slowly closed the ledger.
"That classification hasn't existed for decades."
Lawson looked toward Mateo.
"Can someone create it?"
Richard shook his head.
"It can only be activated by the original trust."
Mateo's thoughts raced.
"So the system already knows."
"It always knew."
Richard answered.
"The company has been waiting for Sofia long before any of us realized it."
Elena looked at Mateo.
"Then Samuel wasn't trying to create an heir."
"He was trying to control one."
Mateo nodded slowly.
"Which means whoever this third brother was..."
"...may still matter."
Lawson examined the walls of the archive.
"There has to be more."
"If someone erased a member of the family, they wouldn't stop with one document."
Mateo agreed.
"Search everything."
The group spread through the room.
Old journals.
Blueprints.
Financial ledgers.
Photographs.
Nearly twenty minutes passed before Isabel called softly from the far corner.
"I found something."
Everyone gathered around.
She held a small wooden box hidden behind a row of accounting books.
There was no lock.
Only a brass plaque.
For the day the truth becomes necessary.
Mateo carefully lifted the lid.
Inside lay three items.
A sealed envelope.
A black-and-white family photograph.
And a handwritten journal.
Elena picked up the photograph first.
Three young boys stood beside an older man outside the original Rivera steel mill.
Samuel.
Gabriel.
And another boy.
He couldn't have been more than ten years old.
Someone had scratched his face with a blade.
Only the outline of his figure remained.
Richard whispered,
"They tried to erase him even from the photographs."
Mateo opened the envelope.
Inside was a single birth certificate.
The missing name was finally visible.
Lucas Rivera.
The room fell silent.
Lawson looked toward Richard.
"What happened to him?"
Richard slowly shook his head.
"No one ever told me."
"The official story was that Gabriel had only one brother."
Mateo opened the journal.
The first page carried his grandfather's signature.
He turned several pages until one passage caught his attention.
He read it aloud.
"A family divided by power cannot survive. If my sons ever become enemies, the company will consume them before any competitor can."
He continued reading.
"If Lucas is ever forced to disappear, let history remember this: it was not because he lacked honor, but because others feared what he represented."
Mateo closed the journal.
"He didn't die."
Elena looked at him.
"You think he survived?"
Mateo nodded.
"If he had died, there would have been no reason to erase him."
Richard slowly exhaled.
"Then someone has been hiding a Rivera heir for almost half a century."
Daniel's voice returned through the radio.
"Mateo."
"Go ahead."
"The investigators have finished searching Samuel's office."
"What did they find?"
"Nothing."
Mateo wasn't surprised.
"But..."
Daniel added,
"They found one recent visitor entry."
"Who?"
"A man signed in yesterday."
"There was no photograph."
"No identification number."
"Only one name."
Mateo waited.
Daniel read it carefully.
"'Lucas.'"
The archive fell completely silent.
The forgotten brother...
May you like
...might not only be alive.
He had been inside Rivera Global less than twenty-four hours earlier.
