Chapter 47: Tracing the Ledger

Millaray

My brother always says I talk too much when I'm scared. So I kept my mouth shut and watched the shoes come down the stairs one at a time.

Black leather, polished. Then dark trousers. Then a hand sliding along the rail.

Lautaro stepped in front of Rayén without looking at her. Carlos and Mateo both had their guns out before the man reached the bottom. My heart was going so hard I thought everyone could hear it.

"Easy, easy," said Elías Barrios, raising both palms. He was our head of security. He'd taught me to ride a bike when I was seven. "It's me. I saw the door open and came to check."

"That door was locked," Carlos said.

"Then someone unlocked it." Elías looked at the guns, then at Lautaro. "Don Lautaro, I've been at the east gate since midnight. Ask the cameras."

"The cameras can be looped," Lautaro said, flat as a table. "Give your weapon to Mateo."

Elías went very still. I saw his jaw work. He had been with this family for twenty-six years, and my brother was asking him to hand over his gun like he was a stranger.

"You're serious."

"Now."

He handed it over, slowly, butt first. Nobody said sorry. Nobody was going to.

"Nobody leaves this room," Lautaro said. "Not one person. Millaray, the phone."

Everyone looked at me, and that was when I felt it, the weight of being the one who could actually do something. Rayén held the burner out to me. Her hand was shaking a little, and there was dried blood in the lines of her palm. Lautaro's blood. I tried not to think about that.

"Can you find where she's hiding?" she asked.

"Maybe. Phones like this are built so you can't." I took it. "But the money isn't built that way. Money always leaves a trail. Always."

I sat on the stool by the old server rack in the corner. It was a dusty thing nobody had touched since our father died, but it still had the line that ran straight to the family's offshore banking servers. I'd been the only one besides Lautaro with a login for four years. It was my job to move money quietly, pay people quietly, and keep our names out of the news.

I plugged the burner in and started pulling its history.

"Talk to me," Lautaro said.

"Give me a minute."

"Millaray."

"I said give me a minute!" It came out too loud. Rayén gave me a small look, not unkind, and I swallowed. "Sorry. Phones leak. Even clean ones. This one has been paid for with the same wallet every month, and that wallet talks to a bank in Panama. If I can find the account, I can find who funds it."

The screen scrolled. Code, numbers, little green lines. Behind me, nobody breathed. Ismael's chair creaked once, and I heard him whisper something that sounded like a name, probably his sister's.

"Rayén?" I said without turning. "The thing you said earlier. About your mother wanting us to find him."

"Yes?"

"If she planned that, then she planned this part too. She knew you'd hand me this phone."

"I know."

"Then why does it feel like we're doing exactly what she wants?"

Nobody answered. I didn't expect them to.

The first bank connected. Panama, like I thought. A private account under a shell called Fundación Huilén. I felt a small, ugly flash of hope. Shells have owners. Owners have names.

"Got something," I said. "Fundación Huilén. Opened four years ago. Monthly deposits, always on the fifteenth. Always from a different company so nobody would notice."

"Who runs it?" Lautaro asked.

"Loading."

Behind me, I could hear Elías shifting his weight. I turned my head and caught his eyes for a second. He looked tired, mostly. Old and tired. And something else I couldn't name.

"Millaray," Rayén said gently. She had come up beside me. "Your hands are shaking."

"I'm fine."

"You're not. What is it?"

"I just..." I laughed, and it sounded horrible. "I just keep thinking this is my fault. If I'd checked the accounts closer. If I'd seen it."

"Seen what?"

"Whatever she hid. For four years, Rayén. Under our noses. Under my nose."

She put a hand on my shoulder, and I almost cried, which would've been embarrassing. I'd been rude to her for months. I'd called her a snake to her face, in front of the staff. And she was standing here, bleeding Lautaro's blood on her sleeve, comforting me.

"It isn't your fault," she said. "Whatever it says."

The screen flickered. A new window opened.

Authorized signatory.

My stomach dropped before I even read it.

A name. A signature scan. A date.

I read it three times, because it didn't make sense. It wasn't Beltrán. It wasn't Maitén. It wasn't any of the people I'd been ready to hate.

Millaray Errázuriz.

My name. In my own handwriting. The loops on the M. The little tail on the z that I'd copied from my mother's old letters when I was twelve.

"That's not mine," I said.

Nobody answered.

"That's not mine. I never opened this. I swear, I've never seen this account in my life." I stood up so fast the stool fell over behind me. "Lautaro, look at me. I've never seen it."

"Sit down," he said quietly.

"It's a forgery! Someone copied it! My login's been in this house for four years, anyone could have..."

"Millaray."

He still hadn't raised his voice. That was the worst part. He just stood there, with blood spreading under his bandage and a face I'd only seen once, the day we buried our father.

"I believe you," he said. "But I need you to read me the date."

My mouth had gone dry. I looked down.

Opened: March 14.

Four years ago. The week before Papa was shot. The week before any of this started.

"That's..." I whispered.

"The week you were in Valparaíso, with no phone and no signal," Lautaro said. "The week I was with you the whole time. I remember because I drove you."

"Then someone used my name before the war even began."

"Yes."

"Which means she planned it all years ago." I felt sick. "She picked me. She picked me back then, Lautaro. Why?"

Rayén's fingers closed around my wrist. "Millaray. Look at the screen."

A second line had appeared under the first, small gray letters I almost missed.

Secondary authorization: valid. Last used: today, 05:52 a.m. From inside the estate.

It was 6:04 now.

And the only machines in that house that could reach this account were in this basement, in my study upstairs, and on the phone in Lautaro's pocket.

Behind us, Elías Barrios slowly reached into his coat for something that wasn't a gun.