Chapter 9 - THE LOCKED DOOR
Dante took the stairs two at a time. Helena’s bedroom door was locked from the outside.
Rafael forced it open.
Helena stood beside her bed, unharmed, pointing at the open balcony doors. A figure was climbing over the railing toward the garden wall.
“He took my notebook,” she said.
“What notebook?” Dante asked.
“The one where I wrote things down after the fall. Names. Dates. Things people told me I’d forgotten.”
Rafael sent two guards after the intruder. Isabela followed Dante to the balcony. Below them, the figure disappeared behind the hedges.
Helena caught Isabela’s arm. “I wrote down what I heard the night I fell.”
“What did you hear?”
“Vicente arguing with someone. A woman.”
“Who was she?”
Helena shook her head. “I couldn’t see her.”
Downstairs, Dr. Santos was gone. His briefcase remained on the table, but the folder containing Teresa’s clinic records had vanished.
Dante checked the front camera. During the blackout, the doctor had walked through the gate alone. He had taken the folder with him.
Isabela called the number he’d given Rafael. It went straight to voicemail.
“Vicente got to him,” Dante said.
“Or Santos came here planning to leave with those records.”
Dante looked at her.
“I want him to be telling the truth,” Isabela said. “That doesn’t mean he told us everything.”
Rafael found a second page tucked inside the birth certificate envelope. It was a copy of a letter from Marisa to Teresa, dated after Isabela’s fifth birthday.
I will keep her safe. But when she is old enough, she should choose whether to meet her father.
Dante read the sentence aloud.
“He knew about me,” Isabela said.
“Yes.”
She pulled the photograph from her pocket and stared at Marisa’s face. “And he made sure I never had a choice.”
Dante’s phone rang. An unknown caller.
It was Dr. Santos.
May you like
“I can explain why I left,” he said. His voice sounded strained. “But you need to get out of that house. Vicente isn’t the person who cut the cameras.”
The call ended.
