Chapter 5 - The Man Behind The Voice
For several seconds, I could not speak.
The old phone felt heavy in my hand.
The stranger on the other end breathed slowly.
Patiently.
Like a man who had rehearsed this moment for years.
"Sofia," he said again.
My fingers tightened around the receiver.
"Who are you?"
Silence.
Then the answer came.
"My name is Gabriel Marquez."
The room seemed to tilt.
Marquez.
My mother's name.
The name that had been erased from my life.
I looked at the photograph still lying on the table.
My mother.
Damian.
The unknown man.
"You knew Elena?"
The voice became softer.
"I loved Elena."
My chest tightened.
I looked around the room filled with photographs of my childhood.
"Are you my father?"
Another pause.
Too long.
Too deliberate.
"That depends on what Damian told you."
Anger rose inside me.
"I am tired of people answering questions with questions."
"I know."
"No. You don't."
My voice shook now.
"I spent my whole life not knowing who I was. My mother lied to me. Damian lied to me. Someone rewrote my identity. Someone has been watching me for years. So if you know the truth, tell me."
The man exhaled slowly.
Then he said the words I had waited my entire life to hear.
"Yes, Sofia."
My eyes filled with tears.
"I am your father."
I sat down hard in the chair beside the phone.
For years, I imagined that moment differently.
I imagined anger.
Relief.
Maybe happiness.
I never imagined hearing my father's voice through an old telephone inside an abandoned house filled with photographs of me.
"Where are you?"
"I can't tell you."
I almost laughed.
Of course.
Another secret.
"Then why call me?"
"Because you found the house."
"You knew I would?"
"I hoped you would."
I looked at the photographs.
"Did you take these?"
"Some."
That answer made my skin crawl.
"You watched me?"
"I protected you."
"No."
I stood again.
"Watching someone without their knowledge is not protection."
He was quiet.
Then:
"Tell that to Damian."
I froze.
Gabriel continued.
"Damian watched you for eight days because he suspected you. I watched you because I knew what would happen if the wrong people discovered who you were."
"Who are the wrong people?"
"You already met some of them."
The line crackled.
"Who?"
"Go back to Damian's house."
"Why?"
"Because the truth is there."
I looked at the dark hallway outside the room.
"You expect me to trust him?"
"No."
Gabriel's voice changed.
"I expect you to make him prove he deserves your trust."
Before I could respond, the line went dead.
"Gabriel?"
Nothing.
"Dad?"
The word escaped before I could stop it.
The silence on the other end felt worse than the voice.
I slowly lowered the receiver.
Then I heard something downstairs.
A floorboard creaked.
I turned.
Someone else was inside the house.
I moved carefully through the hallway.
No lights.
No voices.
Just the sound of my own breathing.
I reached the staircase.
A shadow crossed the bottom floor.
"Who's there?"
No answer.
I grabbed an old metal candleholder from a table and continued.
When I reached the bottom step, the front door opened.
Damian Costa walked inside with two security guards behind him.
I lowered the candleholder.
"You followed me?"
Damian's face was cold.
"I told you not to come here."
"And I stopped listening to your warnings when I realized they were really instructions to stay ignorant."
His guards looked at each other.
Damian dismissed them with a hand.
"Wait outside."
They left.
The door closed.
Now it was just the two of us.
He looked at the photographs covering the walls.
His expression changed.
"You found this room."
"Apparently everyone knew about it except me."
Damian walked toward the table.
Then he saw the photograph.
His face went still.
"You spoke to him."
I stared at Damian.
"You knew he was alive."
Damian did not answer.
That was enough.
"You knew my father was alive."
"Sofia—"
"Don't."
I stepped away from him.
"Don't say my name like you have the right."
He looked tired.
For the first time since I met him, Damian did not look powerful.
He looked like a man trapped by twenty years of bad decisions.
"I believed Gabriel was dead."
"When?"
"Until three years ago."
My anger sharpened.
"So for three years, you knew."
"I knew someone using his name was alive."
"That's not the same thing."
"No."
Damian looked toward the phone.
"But I could never prove it was him."
I folded my arms.
"He said he is my father."
Damian's jaw tightened.
"And you believed him?"
"I believed the way you reacted when I said his name."
Damian looked away.
That told me something else.
There was more.
"Who was Gabriel Marquez?"
Damian stood in silence for a moment.
Then he finally spoke.
"He was my best friend."
The answer surprised me.
I expected enemy.
Business partner.
Rival.
Not friend.
"We built the company together," Damian said.
"Before the money. Before the security. Before any of this."
I looked at the abandoned house.
"This place?"
"Gabriel owned it."
Damian touched the edge of the table.
"Elena lived here with him for a while."
"And you?"
"I came here constantly."
He looked at the old photograph.
"We were family."
I laughed once, bitterly.
"Family seems to mean something different in the Costa world."
Damian accepted the insult.
"You're right."
I waited.
Finally he continued.
"Gabriel discovered the financial network before Elena did."
"What network?"
Damian looked at me.
"A system designed to drain money from my companies, buy influence, and control people through debt."
"Who created it?"
"My brother, Victor."
The name settled into the room.
The dead brother.
The man Damian had trusted.
The man who supposedly sent the video showing Elena stealing files.
"So Victor framed my mother."
"Yes."
"And Gabriel?"
Damian's expression darkened.
"Gabriel confronted him."
"What happened?"
"Two days later, Gabriel's car went off a cliff."
My breathing slowed.
"No body?"
Damian shook his head.
"Nothing they could identify."
"And everyone assumed he was dead."
"I did."
I stared at the photograph again.
"Convenient."
Damian looked at me sharply.
"You think I had something to do with it."
"I don't know what to think."
He took a step toward me.
"Then listen."
"No. You listen."
I pointed at the walls.
"My entire life is here. Birthdays. School. Apartments. Jobs. Someone tracked me for years."
Damian looked around.
"You think Gabriel did this?"
"He admitted some of it."
That bothered him.
I could see it.
"What?"
Damian frowned.
"Gabriel was obsessed with security. But he would never leave photographs like this."
"Why not?"
"Because this room is too obvious."
He walked toward one wall.
He removed a photograph.
Behind it was a small camera lens.
Still active.
A red light blinked.
My stomach dropped.
Damian looked at me.
"This room wasn't built for you."
I whispered:
"Then who built it?"
"Someone who wanted you to find it."
We returned to the mansion just before midnight.
The guards searched the abandoned property.
They found no one.
No fingerprints.
No recent vehicle tracks.
Nothing.
Gabriel had vanished again.
Damian brought me directly to the surveillance room.
He locked the door.
"No employees. No guards."
I looked at him.
"You trust your own security that little?"
"Tonight, yes."
He opened an encrypted folder.
Inside were records I had never seen.
Payments.
Names.
Transfers.
Photographs.
"Victor's network," Damian said.
I scanned the files.
Some names belonged to politicians.
Executives.
Judges.
Security contractors.
People everywhere.
My eyes stopped on one name.
Marcus Vale.
"Who's that?"
Damian's face hardened.
"My current head of security."
I stared at him.
"The man protecting this house?"
"Yes."
"The man who ran my background check?"
Damian nodded.
Everything connected at once.
The fake identity.
The missing records.
The cameras that mysteriously glitched.
The person who entered my room without appearing on surveillance footage.
"Marcus knew."
Damian looked at the monitor.
"He may have known from the beginning."
"Why would he help Victor if Victor is dead?"
Damian did not answer.
He started searching through old security logs.
Then he froze.
"What?"
Damian enlarged one file.
It was an access record.
Someone had entered the underground archive twenty-four hours before I found the hidden documents.
The access code belonged to Marcus Vale.
"He planted the files?"
"Maybe."
I stared at Damian.
"Then none of this can be trusted."
"Some of it can."
"How do you know?"
"I created part of it myself."
That was not comforting.
I turned away.
Everything felt manipulated.
My mother.
My father.
Damian.
The mansion.
Even the clues.
Every answer seemed designed to push me toward the next question.
And I was starting to wonder if someone had planned my entire journey.
Damian pulled another record onto the screen.
"Look."
A security camera from the west wing.
Recorded three nights ago.
Marcus entered a private office.
A minute later, another person joined him.
The face was hidden.
Damian zoomed in.
The figure wore a dark coat.
Male.
Tall.
Older.
They spoke for several minutes.
Then the man turned slightly.
I saw his profile.
My breath caught.
The face looked familiar.
Not because I had met him.
Because I had just seen him in a photograph.
"Gabriel."
Damian whispered it too.
My father had been inside the mansion.
Three days ago.
He had met with Damian's head of security.
"You said he was hiding."
Damian's eyes stayed on the screen.
"So did he."
The video continued.
Marcus handed Gabriel a folder.
Then Gabriel said something.
No audio.
Damian activated lip-reading software.
The program analyzed the footage.
Words appeared on the screen.
SHE FOUND THE HOUSE.
Then Marcus spoke.
The software processed again.
GOOD. NOW WE MOVE TO PHASE TWO.
I stepped back.
"Phase two?"
Damian's face went pale.
He searched the system.
Files disappeared in real time.
One after another.
Someone was inside the network.
Deleting everything.
Damian typed rapidly.
"He's in the system."
"Marcus?"
"Someone."
The lights flickered.
Then every surveillance screen went black.
The entire room died.
Emergency lights switched on.
A red alarm began flashing.
Damian reached for his phone.
No signal.
"What happened?"
He looked toward the steel door.
"Someone shut down the mansion."
Then the intercom crackled.
A man's voice filled the room.
Calm.
Controlled.
Familiar.
"Sofia."
My blood turned cold.
Gabriel.
Damian stared at the speaker.
The voice continued.
"I'm sorry you had to learn the truth this way."
I stepped toward the intercom.
"Dad?"
Damian grabbed my arm.
"Don't."
Gabriel spoke again.
"Damian, open the archive."
Damian's face changed.
"What archive?"
The voice laughed softly.
"The one beneath your surveillance room."
I looked at Damian.
There was another room.
Another secret.
Damian released my arm.
Gabriel continued.
"You kept one thing from her."
Damian's face lost all color.
I whispered:
"What is he talking about?"
Gabriel answered for him.
"Sofia, your mother never died."
The steel floor beneath the surveillance desk clicked.
May you like
A hidden panel began to open.
And from the darkness below us, a woman's voice whispered my name.
