Chapter 7 - The Woman Who Bought My SilenceFor several seconds, I couldn't move.
The room around me seemed to recede. The broken clock, the dusty bookshelves, the blood on Bruno's paw, even Dante's hand resting near his pistol became distant details in a world that had suddenly stopped making sense.
“My husband is alive,” I repeated.
Teresa nodded miserably.
“You should have told me.”
“Yes.”
“You should have told me the moment you found out.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because Elias said Miguel would be killed if anyone learned he had survived. He said your husband was still investigating Victor, and that exposing him too early would destroy everything.”
I stared at her.
“And you believed him?”
“I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I know.”
Dante moved toward the windows, checking the grounds beyond the rain-streaked glass.
“We can't stay here. Victor knows where we are, and Rourke has access to the estate's security network. We need to get everyone to a location he doesn't know about.”
“I want Miguel,” I said.
Dante looked at me.
“So do I.”
“Don't speak as though you have any right to want anything from him.”
His jaw tightened, but he didn't argue.
We left Blackthorn House through a rear entrance. Dante's remaining men took us to a private clinic owned by one of the family's legitimate businesses. Bruno received treatment from a veterinarian who arrived within twenty minutes.
Sophie refused to leave his side.
I sat beside her while the vet bandaged the dog's leg.
“Mama, is Daddy really alive?”
I looked at her small face.
“I don't know, sweetheart.”
“But Grandma Teresa said he was.”
“Sometimes grown-ups are wrong.”
“Are they wrong about everything?”
I kissed her forehead.
“No. But sometimes they're wrong about the things that matter most.”
She thought about that.
Then she placed her little hand on Bruno's bandage.
“Then I'll wait until Daddy tells me himself.”
I nearly broke.
Outside, Dante was speaking to Teresa in low, angry tones. I could hear fragments through the open door.
“Three weeks,” he said.
“I was protecting them.”
“By lying?”
“By trying to keep them alive!”
“Your lies nearly got Sophie killed.”
Teresa's reply was too quiet to hear.
I understood Dante's anger. I shared it.
But there was one question I couldn't stop asking myself.
If Miguel was alive, where had he been during all those nights when I cried myself to sleep?
During Sophie's fevers?
During the days when I worked double shifts and came home to find my little girl waiting at the window with a drawing she wanted to show her father?
Had he been watching us from the shadows?
Or had he been hiding somewhere, convinced that the truth mattered more than the family he had left behind?
I wanted answers.
Even if they shattered everything I had left.
Dante returned to the room carrying a laptop.
“We found something in the estate's security archive.”
He placed it on the table.
A series of grainy images appeared on the screen. The first showed the servants' cottage at 10:47 p.m. on October 7.
A dark figure approached Sophie's window.
He knocked three times.
Then he crouched and slipped a small object beneath the sill.
The next image showed the same man returning the following night.
And the next.
And the next.
Every night I had worked late.
Every night my daughter had been alone.
I felt sick.
“Why didn't the cameras detect him?” I whispered.
“They did,” Dante replied. “Someone deleted the alerts.”
“Rourke?”
“Almost certainly.”
The footage continued.
On the sixth night, the man climbed through the window.
Sophie had been asleep.
He stood beside her bed for nearly a minute, staring down at her.
Then he knelt and said something the camera couldn't record.
Sophie stirred.
The man stepped back immediately.
He placed one hand over his face, as though he were struggling not to cry.
Then he left.
Dante paused the footage.
I stared at the screen.
“Zoom in.”
He enlarged the image.
The man had a scar running down the left side of his face.
The same scar as the man in Miguel's photograph.
But something else caught my attention.
His left hand was clenched tightly at his side. Two fingers appeared stiff and crooked.
Miguel had broken those fingers in an accident at the garage years before his supposed death.
I remembered taking him to the hospital.
I remembered him joking that he'd never be able to play the guitar properly again.
My knees weakened.
“That's him,” I whispered.
Dante said nothing.
I stood, grabbed my coat, and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To find my husband.”
“You can't just walk out.”
I turned on him.
“Watch me.”
Before he could answer, Sophie's voice drifted from the other side of the room.
“Mama?”
She was holding Bruno's old collar.
Something small and metallic had fallen from its inner lining.
A key.
May you like
Attached to it was a strip of paper with four words written in Miguel's handwriting.
THE CHAPEL. BEFORE NINE. ALONE.
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