Chapter 8 - The Secret My Mother Took to Her Grave
Carlos Reyes.
My father's name.
I had never seen him.
My mother had always told me he abandoned us.
Now a dead man's identity had led directly back to him.
I couldn't breathe.
Julián reached for me.
“Mariana.”
I stepped away.
“No.”
“What?”
“I need to think.”
The officer asked:
“Do you know where your father is?”
“No.”
But I remembered something.
A letter.
My mother had kept one letter from him.
She had refused to let me read it.
I had been seventeen.
She had burned it.
Or so I thought.
I suddenly remembered the drawer.
The hidden compartment beneath it.
“I know where the letter might be.”
Julián insisted on coming.
We went to my small apartment across town with police escort.
I opened the old cabinet.
Nothing.
Then I noticed a loose board.
Behind it was a metal box.
Inside were photographs.
My mother.
A younger Adriana.
And a man I recognized immediately.
Carlos.
My father.
My hands shook.
There was another photograph.
Adriana was pregnant.
Standing beside my mother.
On the back were two words.
“THE CHILDREN.”
Julián stared at it.
“What children?”
I didn't know.
Then the officer noticed a hospital bracelet.
Five years old.
Three names.
Tomás.
Emiliano.
Bruno.
I looked at Julián.
“How did my mother know your children?”
He couldn't answer.
The officer opened the letter.
Inside was a confession.
Carlos had been Adriana's financial adviser.
He had discovered someone was trying to steal the boys' inheritance.
He had trusted my mother.
Then he disappeared.
The letter said:
“Lucía, if anything happens to me, protect the children. Mariana must never know until she is old enough to understand.”
I stared at the page.
“Why me?”
Julián looked at the final paragraph.
It said:
“Because Mariana is the one person they will never suspect.”
The room went silent.
A police officer's phone rang.
She answered.
Then she looked at Julián.
“There's been another development.”
“What?”
“Verónica has left the mansion.”
Julián's jaw tightened.
“Where?”
“She took a car.”
“Find her.”
The officer nodded.
Then another message appeared on my phone.
A photograph.
Verónica standing beside a man.
The same man from the old security footage.
The supposed dead attorney.
May you like
And beneath the photograph was a single sentence.
“YOUR FATHER IS WAITING FOR YOU.”
