Chapter 24: The Ballistics Report

Rayen

The fall ended in a violent crash of splintered wood, crushed concrete, and a cloud of suffocating grey dust.

We slammed into the lower level a dimly lit, reinforced sub-vault hidden deep within the foundations of the estate. The impact knocked the air straight from my lungs in a ragged gasp. My vision swam with static, dark spots dancing at the edges of my sight as I coughed against the burning powder coating my throat.

Above us, the gaping hole in the ceiling rained down embers, hot plaster, and jagged shards of glass. The muffled thrum of distant gunfire still echoed through the stone structure above, but down here in the dark, the air was cold, damp, and smelling of ancient earth and gunpowder.

I was lying on my back, completely pinned.

Lautaro had taken the brunt of the fall. His heavy frame was braced over mine, his forearms planted on either side of my head, shielding me from the heavy debris that had plummeted after us. His face was inches from mine, covered in soot, a thin streak of dark blood trickling from his hairline down his carved cheekbone.

His breathing was heavy, ragged, vibrating through his chest and straight into my ribs.

"Rayén," he rasped, his voice rough as gravel. His golden-brown eyes searched my face in the dim emergency light, dark with a fierce, manic intensity. 

"Are you hit? Look at me. Are you bleed?”

"I'm fine," I choked out, my hands instinctively pushing against his chest. My gloves were gone, my bare palms sliding against the torn wool of his tuxedo jacket. Beneath the fabric, his muscles were coiled tight as steel springs, his pulse hammering a violent, wild rhythm against my skin.

He didn't pull away immediately. He hovered there, his thumb coming up to stroke the line of my jaw, brushing away a smudge of ash. The heat of his touch cut right through the freezing air of the vault, sending an erratic, traitorous shiver straight down my spine.

"We don't have long," Lautaro growled softly, his gaze dropping to my mouth before he pulled himself up, hauling me effortlessly to my feet beside him.

My knees wobbled, the heavy, torn lace of my bridal dress catching on the rubble beneath my boots. I looked up at the jagged hole in the ceiling. The fire was burning bright above, casting long, twisting shadows across the cold concrete walls of the vault.

"Aconcagua..." I stammered, my heart stopping in my throat as I remembered my brother standing in the doorway above. "He was up there"

"Your brother can handle himself," Lautaro cut in, his voice cold and devoid of doubt as he reached into his waist belt. "He survived six months in the shadow of your mother's hit squads. He won't die in a hallway."

He turned away, moving toward a heavy, reinforced steel desk bolted to the center of the vault floor. The sub-vault was built like a military bunker lined with gun racks, heavy digital servers, and steel filing cabinets that had survived the collapse above.

I watched him as he reached under the lip of the desk, punching a six-digit code into a concealed keypad. A heavy steel drawer slid open with a quiet, hydraulic hiss.

"You still don't believe me," Lautaro said, not looking at me. It wasn't a question; it was a statement of fact.

My throat tightened, raw and burning. "How can I? Everything I’ve known for six months was a lie! My brother is alive, my mother wants us dead, and you..." I gestured helplessly at the space between us, my voice cracking under the crushing weight of the chaos. "You claim you're the one protecting me!"

"I don't claim anything, Rayén. I will prove it."

Lautaro reached into the drawer and pulled out a thick, black leather folder bound with a steel latch. He turned around, stepping back into my space, his broad shoulders blocking out the dim light of the emergency lanterns.

Without a word, he threw the official forensic dossier onto the corner of the heavy desk beside us.

The sound of the heavy folder hitting the wood echoed like a gunshot in the enclosed vault.

"What is that?" I whispered, staring at the clean, silver seal of the Santiago Medical Examiner's office stamped across the leather cover.

"The truth," Lautaro said quietly, his baritone dropping into a pitch-black, unyielding register. "The complete, unredacted ballistics and autopsy report from the morning your brother was supposed to have died in the Andes."

My hands began to tremble. I took a slow, agonizing step forward, the floorboards crunching under my boots. Every fiber of my being screamed at me not to touch it, not to open that folder, because I knew that whatever was written inside would burn away the final pieces of the life I used to own.

"Open it, mi rosa," Lautaro urged softly, stepping closer until his chest was nearly brushing my back, his warm breath fanning across the sensitive skin of my neck. "Read it with your own eyes."

With numb fingers, I reached out and unlatched the steel lock. The heavy cover fell open, revealing yellowing pages filled with high-resolution crime scene photos, entry-and-exit trajectory diagrams, and official chemical analysis seals.

My eyes swept over the technical jargon, my heart hammering a frantic, agonizing beat against my ribs.

Victim: Aconcagua Altiplano.

Cause of Trauma: High-velocity cranial penetration.

Projectiles Recovered: Two metal jacketed rounds.

My breath hitched in my throat as my fingers traced down to the bottom of the second page. Embedded in the paper was a high-magnification photographic breakdown of the slugs extracted from the scene stamped clearly with serial numbers and rifling grooves.

Caliber: 9x19mm Parabellum.

Rifling Profile: Hexagonal, right-hand twist.

Manufacture Origin: Custom Altiplano Syndicate Armory.

The room seemed to tilt on its axis. The oxygen vanished from my lungs.

"An Errázuriz tactical team carries custom .45 ACP sidearms," Lautaro’s voice murmured right behind my ear, smooth, lethal, and devastatingly calm. "We don't use standard Altiplano ordinance. The bullet pulled from that scene... came from a gun issued exclusively to your father's inner circle. To Beltrán. And to your mother's private guard."

I squeezed my eyes shut, a single, burning tear breaking free and slipping down my ash-stained cheek. The paper crumpled beneath my shaking fingers.

Lautaro had never shot my brother. He had found him bleeding out from shots fired by his own people.

"Why?" I whispered, my voice breaking into a thousand shattered pieces as the grief finally overwhelmed the anger. "Why would she do this? She’s my mother..."

"Because your father was weak," Lautaro rasped, his hands coming up to rest gently on my shoulders. His palms were warm, heavy, and unnervingly grounding, holding me up when my legs felt ready to give way. "He wanted peace. Your mother wanted the entire city. And to get it, she needed a war that would wipe my family out and leave her holding the reins of yours."

He slowly turned me around in his arms until I was forced to face him. I looked up into his dark, golden-brown eyes, finding no malice there. No triumph. Only an intense, slow-burning fierce protectiveness that made my chest ache with a terrifying, confusing need.

"I didn't force you into this marriage to ruin you, Rayén," Lautaro whispered, his thumb reaching out to gently catch the tear on my cheek, his touch maddeningly tender amidst the rubble. "I forced you into this marriage to keep you alive."

The hatred I had carried for him for six months was gone, leaving a hollow, terrifying void in my chest, a void that was rapidly being filled by the overwhelming, dangerous heat of the man holding me in the dark.

Before I could speak, a low, rhythmic thud-thud-thud echoed from the heavy steel blast doors at the far end of the sub-vault.

Lautaro froze, his posture instantly shifting from tender to lethal. He shoved me behind his back, drawing his heavy sidearm in a single, fluid motion, leveling it at the reinforced steel doors.

The digital lock on the blast door didn't beep. It sizzled. A bright, white-hot line of thermite began eating through the heavy steel frame, melting the deadbolts from the outside.

Through the sparks and thick smoke pouring into the vault, a distorted electronic voice echoed from the security intercom above our heads.

"Don Lautaro," the voice rasped smooth, cold, and undeniably female. "You can keep the girl... but her blood belongs to Santiago."