Chapter 50: Betrayal at Home

Rayén

The thing in my hands was a man, and he was trying to say something.

"Lights!" I screamed. "Somebody get the lights!"

Boots pounded. Metal screeched. Then the bulb flickered back to life, and the basement jumped out of the dark like a bad dream.

It was Elías. He was on his back with both hands pressed to his stomach, and the red was coming through his fingers faster than I could stand to look at. His eyes were wide and surprised, like a man who couldn't believe it was happening to him.

"He jumped in front of me," Millaray said. She was on her knees beside him, shaking all over. "I didn't even see Mateo. Elías just... he just pushed me."

"Press harder," I told her. "Both hands. Don't let go."

"Where's Mateo?" Lautaro said behind me.

I looked up. The steel door at the top of the stairs hung open. A thick line of blood ran down the steps and out into the hall.

"Carlos, go. Take two men. Bring him back breathing."

Carlos was gone before he finished the sentence.

Lautaro dropped to one knee on Elías's other side. His own bandage was soaked through now, and I don't think he even knew. He put a hand on the old man's forehead, gently, the way you'd touch a sleeping child.

"You stubborn old fool," he said. His voice broke in the middle. "I almost shot you an hour ago."

"You... had good reason," Elías wheezed. He tried to smile. "Tell the girl... I saw who held the lever. It wasn't... only Mateo."

"What do you mean?"

"Doctor first," I said, because I couldn't listen to a dying man try to talk. "Please. Lautaro. Please."

"Already called." He didn't look at me. He was watching Elías's chest. "Five minutes."

Five minutes was a long time. We all knew it.

I stayed there until two house medics came running. They lifted Elías away on a stretcher, and Millaray stumbled after them, her hands still red to the wrists. I let her go. Some things you can't comfort anyone through.

Then the basement was quiet. It was only me, Lautaro, and the monitor still glowing in the corner like nothing had happened.

"Rayén."

"Don't."

"We need to talk about what's on that screen."

"I said don't." I wiped my hands on my trousers. They wouldn't come clean. "Elías is bleeding on the floor because of my mother, and you want to read me signatures."

"I want to show you before you walk out of here and do something stupid."

That stung because he was right. I'd been planning to do something stupid. I'd been planning to find Beltrán with my own hands.

He pulled a folded paper from inside his shirt, creased and stained. I knew it the second I saw the ink. I had seen it in the vault, under the dust, in the ledgers we had stolen together.

"The hit order," I said quietly. "The one against us."

"It was in the stack from the vault. I didn't show you because you had enough that night." He smoothed it flat on the tray, next to the wire transfer Millaray had printed. "Read the bottom of both."

I didn't want to. I looked anyway.

The same name. B. Valdivieso. The same sharp tail on the V. The same tiny loop he always put on the B, a flourish he swore was just a habit from his schoolteacher.

"It's him," Lautaro said softly. "It matches. Down to the pressure."

"No."

"Rayén..."

"He taught me to write my name, Lautaro. He sat at my father's desk every Sunday for five years." My voice wobbled and I let it. "When my father hit me for failing my lessons, Beltrán came into my room that night with warm milk and told me my father was a coward with a loud voice. He held my hand when my brother's casket went into the ground. He held my hand."

"I know."

"You don't know! You didn't have him!"

"No," he said. "I didn't have anyone."

It was so quiet I almost missed it. I looked at him, and he was looking at the paper, not at me. His jaw was tight, and I realized, with a small cold shock, that he was jealous. Not of Beltrán. Of the milk. Of someone coming into his room.

I didn't know what to do with that, so I did the only thing I could. I picked up the transfer and held it right under the light.

And I stopped.

"What?" Lautaro said.

"Hold on."

I put the hit order beside it. I looked at the B. I looked at the loop.

"This loop goes counterclockwise," I said slowly. "Beltrán's goes clockwise. Always. He's left-handed. He pulls the pen toward himself. When I was little, I tried to copy it, and he laughed at me because I kept doing it backwards." My heart was starting to pound. "Both of these are right-handed."

"They look identical."

"They look perfect. Beltrán's never perfect. Look at the tail. He drags it. Whoever signed this was careful, and he is never careful, because he thinks signatures should look like you stopped caring." I stared at the paper until my eyes hurt. "Somebody copied him. Somebody who's studied it. Somebody who's sat at that same desk."

"Your mother," Lautaro said.

"Maybe. Maybe not." I swallowed. "But then why does the voice on that recording..."

The monitor beeped.

Both of us turned. Millaray had left a security feed open in the corner, the front gate camera, grainy and green. At first I thought it was static.

Then I saw the headlights.

A black car sat on the road outside the estate gate, engine running, doors shut. And in the middle of the beam, small and gray and alone, stood a man with a limp. His arms were open wide, like he was waiting to be hugged. He was smiling the Sunday smile I'd known my whole life.

Beltrán Valdivieso.

Behind him, in the back window of the car, I saw a pale hand pressed flat against the glass.

A long white scar ran down its forearm.

The burner on the tray started to ring.

I picked it up. The screen said Beltrán. My own thumb shook on the green button.

"Mija," his voice said, soft and warm and awful, "you've been a very good girl. Now listen carefully, because I don't have long. Don't let your husband touch the phone. And whatever you do, do not turn around."

I heard the stairs creak behind me.