Chapter 33: Millaray’s Suspicions

RAYÉN

The sound of my brother’s name hanging in the damp basement felt like a physical blow.

Lautaro was already on his feet before the static on the comms terminal faded. He didn’t say a word to me. He pulled a black linen shirt over his sweat-slicked shoulders, wincing as the fabric dragged across his freshly bleeding stitches, then cleared the room with long, determined strides.

I didn’t follow him to the south gate.

If Mateo was really standing outside in the freezing mountain mist, calling my name over a closed family frequency, then every instinct I’d developed through six years of grief told me that stepping onto that driveway would be walking straight into a crosshair.

Mateo didn’t make house calls.

He calculated vector paths.

Instead, while the safehouse erupted into a frenzy of cocked submachine guns and heavy boots against concrete, I slipped down the dark service corridor toward the comms alcove.

The room was cramped, filled with the smell of hot copper wire, ozone, and dust. Four ancient monitors glowed in dim monochrome green, flickering with the pulse of the estate’s secondary generator.

My fingers were ice-cold and trembling so badly that I could barely tap the terminal keys.

Mateo’s signal hadn’t simply bypassed the dead-zone jammer. It had used an internal handshake protocol.

That meant his transmitter carried a specific, hard-coded digital key, one that could only be generated from inside the Errázuriz network.

But when I pulled up the system log to trace where that handshake had originated, my breath caught.

The frequency hadn’t been routed from my mother’s compound in the north.

It had been generated right here, inside this safehouse, six hours ago.

Someone on the inside didn’t just leak our location, I thought, my heart pounding painfully against my ribs.

They invited him.

“Looking for something, Rayén?”

The voice was cold and sharp, cutting through the hum of the cooling fans behind me.

I didn’t jump, but the blood drained from my face so quickly that my vision blurred. I slowly turned, keeping my hands flat against the edge of the wooden terminal desk.

Millaray stood in the narrow doorway, framed by the darkness of the hallway.

She wasn’t holding her sidearm, but her right hand rested heavily on her tactical belt, dangerously close to the grip. Her dark eyes narrowed as she watched every movement of my shoulders, every breath I took.

“I’m tracing the incoming signal,” I said, forcing my voice to remain steady. “Your brother said someone in his inner circle leaked the encryption keys. I wanted to see who opened the door.”

Millaray stepped into the room. Her boots made almost no sound against the rubber matting. She moved like a ghost through her own sanctuary.

She stopped less than two feet from me, bringing with her the sharp metallic smell of rain and burnt powder.

“My brother is a fool when it comes to you,” she said softly, her voice carrying quiet venom. “He looks at you and sees a survival partner. He looks at your family’s blood and thinks it can be used to forge a treaty.”

“I took his hand because we have the same enemies, Millaray,” I replied, holding my ground even as the narrow room seemed to squeeze the air from my lungs. “Nothing more.”

“Then why are you digging through the master access logs instead of the gate telemetry?”

She reached out and slammed her gloved fingers onto the top of the monitor, tilting the screen toward her.

The green light reflected in her hard eyes as she studied the scrolling code.

“These aren’t the gate logs,” she whispered.

Her jaw tightened.

“This is Lautaro’s private ledger. The secondary encryption partition.”

“He told me there were no secrets between us,” I said, watching her face carefully. “He swore an oath when we shook hands in the library.”

“Lautaro lies to protect what’s left of us!”

Her composure cracked just enough to expose the raw fear beneath it.

She leaned closer, her face inches from mine, her breath warm against my cheek.

“You come from a house of snakes, Rayén. Doña Elena raised you on poison and half-truths. You think you can walk in here, sit at my father’s desk, and demand to know how we keep this family alive?”

“He didn’t lie to protect you.”

My voice dropped to a whisper, but somehow it felt heavier than a scream.

“He lied because he’s hiding something about Mateo.”

Millaray froze.

The tension between us pulled tight, vibrating like a wire stretched to its breaking point.

Outside, a muffled boom echoed off the granite cliffs. A flashbang or an engine backfiring on the driveway.

Neither of us blinked.

“What did you find?” Millaray demanded.

Her hand finally closed around the grip of her weapon.

“Tell me what you saw on that screen, or so help me God, I’ll put a bullet through your knee and let the Council have whatever’s left.”

“Look at the timestamp.”

I pointed toward the glowing green text scrolling across the bottom left monitor.

“Three days before my father was executed on that live feed. Before the High Council ever declared Lautaro compromised.”

Millaray’s eyes snapped toward the screen.

“That’s an outbound transmission,” I said, my chest tightening with every word. “An encrypted burst sent from Lautaro’s personal satellite phone. Sent directly to a private receiver registered in the high passes.”

Millaray swallowed hard.

Her chest rose and fell as she read the destination code.

“No.”

Her voice barely carried.

“That’s… that’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible,” I whispered.

The cold reality settled deep into my bones.

“Lautaro didn’t just know Mateo was alive. He’s been communicating with him for months.”

I stared at the screen, barely able to breathe.

“This whole war… this entire bloodshed between our families…”

I stopped.

My breath caught as the terminal screen suddenly flickered violently red.

A hard override command swept across all four monitors, wiping the log files in real time. The green lines of code disappeared, replaced by a single repeating line of bold black text.

Millaray stumbled backward, staring at the screen in horror.

The door behind us clicked shut.

The heavy electronic lock dropped into its frame with a loud mechanical thud, sealing the comms alcove from the outside.

Through the thick, bulletproof observation glass overlooking the hallway, I saw Lautaro standing beneath the dim yellow corridor light.

His shirt was unbuttoned.

His face was pale and unreadable.

A remote override key rested in his hand.

He looked through the glass directly at me.

His dark eyes were hollow, filled with a quiet, tragic resignation.

Then the overhead lights in the safehouse went completely dark.