Chapter 4 - Taken Before Midnight
For three seconds, I could not understand what I was seeing.
The open window.
The empty bed.
Luna lying on the pillow with red ink across her neck.
Then every instinct inside me exploded at once.
I ran into the room and leaned through the window. Isabella’s hospital room was on the second floor. Beneath it, a narrow maintenance roof connected to an older wing of the building. A metal ladder descended toward a service lane.
Someone had planned the route.
“They took her,” I said.
Hospital security sealed every exit, but sealing the building meant little if the person who took Isabella was already outside.
Inspector Herrera arrived within minutes. She ordered officers to review cameras, question staff, and search every vehicle leaving the hospital grounds.
The first useful image appeared at 10:41 p.m.
A woman wearing medical scrubs pushed a wheelchair through a service corridor. Isabella sat in it with a blanket pulled to her chin. Her face was turned away from the camera.
The woman was not Beatriz.
She was older, with dark hair tied beneath a surgical cap.
The badge clipped to her chest belonged to a nurse named Carla Jiménez.
Carla was home in Málaga with influenza.
Someone had copied her identification.
Another camera showed the woman entering an ambulance bay where a white delivery van waited. The van’s license plates had been stolen that morning.
“This was organized,” Lucía said.
“By Rafael.”
“Probably. But anger will not help us find her.”
I stepped closer.
“My daughter has been abused for months, kidnapped from a hospital, and threatened with a mutilated toy. Do not ask me not to be angry.”
“I am not asking you to stop feeling it,” she replied. “I am asking you not to let them use it.”
She was right.
Rafael knew me. He knew I would want to move faster than the law, call private security teams, shut down airports, and threaten every person who had ever spoken to him.
He would expect that.
I forced myself to think as I would during a hostile business takeover.
What did he need?
Money.
Documents.
Control.
And time.
He had lost access to the accounts we had frozen. He would need another way to force me to cooperate.
My phone rang from an unknown number.
Everyone in the room went silent.
Lucía activated a recording device and motioned for me to answer.
“Alejandro.”
It was Rafael.
His voice sounded calm.
“You have something that belongs to me.”
“Where is Isabella?”
“Safe.”
“Let me hear her.”
“You don’t give orders anymore.”
“I will give you everything you want.”
A soft laugh.
“That is what I always hated about you. You think every problem is a negotiation.”
“No. I think you are a coward hiding behind an eight-year-old child.”
Lucía raised a warning hand.
Rafael’s breathing changed.
I had struck the right wound.
All his life, he had lived in the space behind me. I was the eldest son, the company founder, the person our father trusted. Rafael had received money and titles, but never the authority he believed he deserved.
“You built your empire because Father gave you the first investment,” he said.
“Father gave us both the same amount. I built something. You spent yours.”
“You always thought you were better.”
“I never thought about you enough to compare us.”
The line went silent.
Then Isabella cried out in the background.
“Dad!”
I gripped the phone.
“I’m here, mi vida.”
Her voice was cut off.
Rafael returned.
“You will transfer twenty-five million euros to an account I send you. You will also sign a statement admitting that you suffered a mental breakdown in Dubai and granted me temporary authority over the company.”
“And Isabella?”
“You’ll get her when Beatriz and I are safely out of Europe.”
“Beatriz is with you?”
“She was useful.”
The way he said it made me wonder whether Beatriz understood that Rafael considered people disposable.
“I need proof Isabella is alive.”
“You heard her.”
“I heard one word. Put her on the phone.”
“No.”
“Then there is no agreement.”
“You have six hours.”
The call ended.
Technicians had traced it only as far as a network of redirected signals. The last identifiable point was near the port of Algeciras, more than an hour away.
Lucía began coordinating with police units, border control, and maritime authorities.
I called Sebastián.
“Rafael wants a statement declaring me mentally incompetent.”
“That would allow him to challenge the account freezes.”
“He also wants twenty-five million.”
“He may already have prepared the transfer documents.”
“I want you to create them.”
Sebastián stared at me through the video call.
“You intend to cooperate?”
“I intend to make him believe I have.”
We prepared a false transaction pathway that would appear legitimate but could be tracked the moment Rafael accessed it. My finance team created a temporary account showing the requested balance.
Meanwhile, Gabriel searched old family properties.
Rafael would not hold Isabella somewhere unfamiliar if he needed to move her quickly. He preferred places he controlled, places where he knew every road and exit.
At midnight, Gabriel called.
“There is a farmhouse outside Casares owned by one of Rafael’s shell companies.”
“Send the address to Lucía.”
“There’s more. A traffic camera captured a white van heading in that direction forty minutes after the kidnapping.”
Police units moved toward the farmhouse without lights or sirens.
I wanted to go with them.
Lucía refused.
“If Rafael sees you, he may panic.”
“She is my daughter.”
“And that is why you will stay here until my team secures the building.”
Waiting was torture.
At 1:32 a.m., Lucía received a message from the tactical unit.
The farmhouse was empty.
They found rope, children’s medication, and one of Isabella’s white shoes.
On a table lay a laptop displaying the false bank account we had created.
Rafael was watching us.
Seconds later, another call came.
This time, video appeared.
Isabella sat in the back seat of a moving car. Her hands were tied in front of her. Beatriz sat beside her, no longer wearing the silk robe. Her hair was pulled back, and there was a bruise on her cheek.
Rafael held the camera.
“You tried to track me,” he said.
“I sent no one.”
“Don’t insult me.”
He turned the camera toward Isabella.
She tried to be brave, but tears ran silently down her face.
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Beatriz leaned toward the phone.
“Alejandro, give him the money.”
Her voice shook.
“I didn’t know he would take her. I swear.”
Rafael struck her.
The image jerked.
Isabella screamed.
I forced my voice to remain steady.
“Rafael, listen to me. The money is yours. The documents are yours. You have won.”
He smiled.
I had never said those words to him before.
He needed to hear them.
“Send me the signed confession within one hour,” he said. “Then drive alone to the abandoned marina east of Estepona.”
“You will bring Isabella?”
“Yes.”
“And Beatriz?”
He looked at her.
“That depends on how useful she remains.”
The call ended.
Lucía studied the frozen image.
“Play the last ten seconds again.”
The technician rewound it.
Behind Rafael’s voice came a low, rhythmic sound.
Metal against metal.
Then a deep horn.
Lucía looked at me.
“They’re not in a car.”
“What?”
“They’re inside a vehicle being transported.”
Gabriel understood first.
“A ferry.”
Police contacted the ports, but no ferry matching the sound had recently departed near Estepona.
Then Isabella’s doctor, who had remained nearby, noticed something in the video.
“The blanket around her shoulders,” he said. “There’s a logo.”
We enlarged the image.
A blue crest appeared on the fabric.
Costa del Sol Equestrian Club.
My father’s old riding estate.
It had private stables, service tunnels, and an underground vehicle lift that produced a hornlike warning sound whenever it descended.
Rafael had not taken Isabella far.
He had taken her to the one property where we had both spent our childhood.
As police prepared to move, Sebastián handed me the false confession.
“You cannot go alone,” he said.
“I won’t.”
But when we reached the estate, the main house was dark.
The stable doors stood open.
A child’s voice echoed from somewhere beneath the ground.
“Dad!”
I ran toward it.
A gunshot shattered the night.
And a figure fell from the stable doorway directly in front of me.
It was Beatriz.
May you like
Blood spread across her coat as she grabbed my arm and whispered four words.
“Rafael isn’t working alone.”
