Chapter 2 - The Brother Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
The chandelier exploded.
Glass rained across the dining room.
“DOWN!”
Ernesto grabbed Valeria and pulled her behind the table.
Gabriel reached Sofia a second later.
Another shot shattered a window.
Then another.
Men from both families returned fire toward the darkness outside.
Valeria covered her ears.
“What is happening?”
Ernesto shielded her with his body.
“My brother is dead.”
Marco crouched behind a marble column.
“No, Ernesto.”
“You buried him!”
“You buried an empty coffin.”
Ernesto stared at him.
“What?”
Marco’s face was pale.
“Mateo survived.”
Twenty years earlier, Mateo Vega had been Ernesto’s younger brother.
Brilliant.
Ambitious.
Cruel.
And obsessed with one belief:
The Vegas should rule San Aurelio alone.
Peace with the Salazars was weakness.
When Ernesto married Isabella, a woman who secretly wanted the feud ended, Mateo considered her dangerous.
Then came the hospital fire.
Isabella died.
Lucia Salazar disappeared.
Two infants vanished.
And Mateo Vega was supposedly killed three days later.
Ernesto had believed the nightmare ended there.
It had only begun.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ernesto demanded.
Marco looked toward Sofia.
“Because he had her.”
Ernesto stopped.
“What?”
“He found out about the switch.”
Marco’s voice broke.
“Mateo knew Isabella had moved your biological daughter. He found Sofia before I could.”
Sofia stared at him.
“You know me?”
“I knew the woman who raised you.”
“My grandmother?”
Marco nodded.
“Rosa wasn’t your grandmother. She was Isabella’s nurse.”
Sofia’s eyes filled with tears.
“She told me my parents died.”
“She was protecting you.”
“From him?”
“Yes.”
Valeria looked at Gabriel.
“And me?”
Gabriel said nothing.
Marco answered instead.
“Lucia arranged for Valeria to be taken out of the city.”
Gabriel’s face tightened.
“You had no right to tell her.”
“She has every right to know.”
Suddenly, a vehicle smashed through the courtyard gates.
Ernesto shouted orders.
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Someone screamed.
Valeria felt a hand grab her.
She fought wildly.
“Let me go!”
“It’s me.”
Sofia.
The two girls crouched together beneath the table.
They stared at each other in the darkness.
Twenty minutes earlier, they had been strangers.
Now their lives were connected by a secret neither understood.
“Do you know anything?” Valeria whispered.
Sofia shook her head.
“My grandmother died three months ago. She gave me the medallion before she died.”
“What did she say?”
Sofia swallowed.
“She said if a man with gray-green eyes ever recognized it, I should run.”
Valeria looked toward Ernesto.
Sofia’s voice shook.
“I thought she was confused.”
A flashlight beam swept across the room.
Men entered through the broken windows.
Not Vega.
Not Salazar.
Marco shouted.
“Kitchen! Everybody move!”
Ernesto grabbed Sofia.
Gabriel took Valeria.
For one strange second, both girls noticed it.
Each father had instinctively reached for his biological daughter.
They escaped through the restaurant kitchen.
Behind them came shouting and gunfire.
Marco opened a steel pantry door revealing stairs.
“Down.”
They descended into an old wine cellar.
Ernesto looked around.
“You knew this existed?”
“I built it.”
“For what?”
“For tonight.”
Ernesto grabbed him.
“You planned this?”
“I prepared for it.”
“That is not an answer.”
Marco pushed him away.
“Mateo contacted me six months ago.”
Everyone froze.
“He said he knew Sofia was alive. He knew Valeria was working here. He knew tonight’s peace dinner was happening.”
Valeria stared at him.
“You knew I worked here?”
Marco nodded.
“Why do you think you were assigned this room?”
Valeria’s stomach dropped.
The spill.
The medallion.
The confrontation.
It hadn’t been coincidence.
“You arranged this.”
“I needed both families in the same room.”
“You used me!”
“Yes.”
Ernesto lunged at Marco.
Gabriel stopped him.
“Not now.”
Ernesto turned furiously.
Gabriel pointed upward.
“If Mateo is alive, we have a bigger problem.”
For once, the rivals agreed.
Marco led them through a tunnel beneath the restaurant.
After nearly ten minutes, they emerged inside an abandoned church two blocks away.
A single black SUV waited.
Marco opened the door.
Nobody moved.
Ernesto said, “Where are we going?”
“To someone who knows the rest.”
“Who?”
Marco looked at Valeria.
“Her mother.”
Gabriel went completely still.
Valeria stared at Marco.
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
“No.”
“Cancer.”
“No, Valeria.”
Her voice cracked.
“I buried her.”
“You buried Elena Cruz.”
Marco stepped closer.
“Elena loved you. She raised you. She protected you. In every way that mattered, she was your mother.”
Valeria could barely breathe.
“But she wasn’t the woman who gave birth to you.”
Valeria looked at Gabriel.
His eyes were wet.
That told her the answer before Marco said it.
“Lucia Salazar is alive.”
Valeria stumbled backward.
“No.”
Gabriel whispered:
“I found out three weeks ago.”
Valeria stared at him.
“You knew?”
“I was trying to bring her home.”
“You sat at that table and let me think my mother was dead?”
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You seemed pretty comfortable telling me you were my father.”
Gabriel had no answer.
Sofia looked at Ernesto.
“What else are you hiding?”
“Nothing.”
Marco laughed bitterly.
Everyone turned.
Ernesto’s face darkened.
“What?”
Marco reached into his coat and removed another envelope.
“Isabella didn’t die in the hospital fire.”
Ernesto’s entire body went rigid.
Marco handed him a photograph.
It had been taken only six months earlier.
A woman stood on the balcony of a seaside house.
Older now.
Silver threaded through her dark hair.
But unmistakable.
The woman from Valeria’s medallion.
Isabella Vega.
Alive.
Ernesto whispered his wife’s name.
Then he noticed someone standing behind her in the photograph.
A man.
Mateo Vega.
His supposedly dead brother.
Valeria looked at Marco.
“Where was this taken?”
“Portugal.”
“Why is Isabella with Mateo?”
Marco hesitated.
And Ernesto understood.
“No.”
Marco lowered his head.
“Ernesto—”
“No.”
“Isabella didn’t spend twenty years hiding from Mateo.”
May you like
Marco looked at him.
“She spent twenty years hiding with him.”
