Chapter 31: Eyes on the Estate

 RAYÉN

Lautaro didn’t fear when the iron door swung on its hinges.

But  I saw the small sudden pause in his chest,the way his ribs locked against the blood soaking through his linen shirt. 

The guard at the entrance fell down forward,his  fingers well grabbed at the soft curtains.

“The High Council…” the man choked out. 

Blood bubbled at the corner of his cracked lips, spilling onto the polished parquet. 

“They’re… at the gates.”

Millaray moved before the guard’s knees hit the floor. She quickly grabbed him in his vest and dragged him inside to throw the deadbolt shut. 

“They brought the execution squad,” she said quietly.

She didn’t look at me or her brother. 

She was facing the doorway, her sidearm raised toward the mahogany door. 

“They know about the terminal. They know the feed went out.”

“They don’t care about the feed,” Lautaro said. 

His voice was too quiet, a flat calm that made the hair on my neck rise. He placed one hand on the desk, knuckles turning white as he forced himself upright. 

The grayness beneath his skin had deepened, but his posture remained terrifyingly straight. 

“They care that Aconcagua is dead. And they care that I’m still breathing.”

I stood between them, my hands trembling so violently. I curled my fingers tightly until my nails bit my palms. My mind was still trapped in that stone cell. Six years of waking in the night reaching for a ghost, six years of staring at my mother’s cold eyes while she told me fire had consumed my brother.

It had all been a play. A slow theater where I was the only one who didn’t realize the blood was painted,until today, when the blood turned real.

“Rayén.”

Lautaro’s voice breaks through the ringing in my ears. He wasn’t looking at the door. He was looking at me, his dark eyes hollowed by pain while holding an intensity heavy enough to crush me.

“The service lift behind the tapestry,” he said, nodding toward the far corner of the library where a faded Spanish wool weave hung against the plaster.

 “It drops to the lower wine cellar. From there, the drainage culvert leads toward the eastern perimeter.”

“And what?” I asked, my voice was extremely weak and quiet.

“We run?”

“No,” Millaray hissed,his eyes still locked on the door. 

“We clear the estate before they lock down the outer roads. If the Council has called an execution order, they’ve already set up kill boxes along the main avenue. We move through the shadows, or we end up like him.”

 She nudged the unconscious guard with her boot.

Lautaro didn’t answer. He reached down, his blood-stained fingers closing around the Sig Sauer. He racked the slide with a slow, deliberate pull draining the last color from his lips.

“We don’t take the culvert,” he said softly.

Millaray spun around.

 “Lautaro, are you insane? There are almost twelve men out there with heavy armor and full authority from the Old Five. We don’t have the ammunition for a siege!”

“Look out the floor-to-ceiling windows, sister,” Lautaro whispered.

Everywhere went silent, only the sound of the estate’s backup generator. I stepped toward the dark velvet drapes covering the tall arched windows overlooking the northern grounds.

I pulled the fabric back an inch, holding my breath now.

The night was cold. Thin mist had rolled down from the peaks, settling over the manicured hedges and sweeping driveway that curled toward the gated entrance. The security floodlights were off, leaving the grounds bathed in bruised blue moonlight.

At first, everything looked dead. Empty.

Then I saw them, waiting in the darkness.

I saw Parked wrought-iron perimeter, idling silently beneath eucalyptus trees, were three black, unmarked SUVs. They weren’t tactical vehicles like Beltrán’s mercenaries used. They were sleek civilian trucks with heavy-tinted windows.

And they weren’t moving.

They sat in the darkness with their running lights cut, spaced along the estate wall.

“Those aren’t the Council’s men,” I breathed, my forehead touching the icy glass. “The Council moves with sirens and tactical squads. They want blood to look official. They want a spectacle.”

“They’re watching,” Lautaro said. He moved behind me, close enough that I felt his ragged breath against my shoulder. He held his ribs with one hand, crimson seeping through his fingers and staining his sleeve. “Look closer at the roof of the middle unit, Rayén.”

I adjusted my focus through the reflection of my pale face against the glass.

On top of the center vehicle, a small, matte-black optical turret rotated slowly. An infrared beam changed against the tree bark as the thermal camera swept the upper floor.

They weren’t preparing an assault. They were running surveillance. They were mapping the exit routes.

“Beltrán?” Millaray asked, joining us at the glass.

“No,” I whispered. I feel cold  inside me. The realization hit like a blow. “Not Beltrán. My mother doesn’t use those tracking units. She thinks electronics are clumsy.”

“Then who?” Lautaro asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

I turned to him. His jaw was set, his dark eyes searching my face for the piece of the puzzle I had been holding back without knowing it.

“Mateo,” I said. The name tasted like ash. “When we were kids, before he disappeared, he used to spend hours in the old radio shed behind the vineyard. He was obsessed with signal loops and directional taps. He used to say that if you could see where a man was going, you wouldn't need to shoot him.”

Outside, heavy boots thundered down the marble corridor. The High Council’s execution squad had reached the wing. Metal struck the library door,a battering ram or breaching boot that made the hinges groan.

Millaray grabbed my jacket, her hands  tight enough to bruise. “We have to go. Now!”

I looked back through the window one last time.

The tinted window of the middle SUV rolled down two inches.

In the pale moonlight, I caught the faint reflection of a hand resting on the door frame. A hand with a long, thin scar across the knuckles, the exact mark Mateo got when he fell into the greenhouse glass at twelve.

The driver didn’t raise a weapon or signal the Council squad.

He only raised two fingers to his forehead in a slow, mocking salute.

Then the window rolled back up, sealing him inside the dark.