Chapter 2 - CHAPTER 1: THE GRAVESTONE REVEALED
The white cardboard of the card felt ice-cold in my hand.
I stared at the handwriting written in dark blue ink across the bottom: “To my loving brother Rogelio, for taking care of what matters most. — David Santillan, 2009.”
My breath hitched. David Santillan was my father. He had died in a tragic factory explosion in 2009—fifteen years ago—or so I had been led to believe. Yet the financial withdrawal forms Veronica had just presented to our dinner guests bore my father’s exact signature, dated not fifteen years ago, but three days prior.
I raised my eyes to look at Veronica. Her face, usually so perfectly composed, had turned pale under the grand chandelier of our dining hall.
"Alejandro, darling," Veronica said, her voice faltering as she stepped closer to me, trying to take the paper from my hands. "Don't let her mind games get to you. She’s an old, bitter woman who used your father’s memory to forge those documents. We need to call the police right now before she gets away with my bracelet."
"Where is Rogelio?" I asked, my voice low, dropping to a tone that made even the remaining guests freeze in their seats.
"What?" Veronica blinked, forcing a nervous chuckle. "Your uncle Rogelio? You know he moved to Spain years ago after your father's estate was settled—"
"Rogelio never left Mexico," a soft, trembling voice said from the top of the marble staircase.
We all turned. It was my ten-year-old son, Mateo. In his small hands, he held an old leather-bound ledger he had pulled from the library under the stairs—a room Veronica had kept locked for as long as I could remember.
"Mateo, go back to your room this instant!" Veronica commanded, her voice sharpening into a razor-thin edge.
"No, Mom," Mateo said, holding his ground. He walked down the steps, his eyes fixed on me. "Grandma told me yesterday. She said Uncle Rogelio comes here every month. She saw him through the window of the guest house two days ago. He was talking to Mom in the garden."
The room erupted into quiet, shocked whispers among my business associates. The illusion was shattering, piece by piece.
I looked at Veronica, then down at the bracelet still resting on the table. The housekeeper who had pulled it from my mother’s coat was trembling violently, her eyes darting toward Veronica as if silently pleading for instructions.
"You planted it," I said, the truth hitting me like a physical blow. "You had the housekeeper slip the bracelet into my mother's pocket while she was changing for dinner."
"That's absurd! Why would I frame your mother?!" Veronica screamed, her composure finally snapping. "She’s a nobody! A dirty, uneducated woman who dragged her filth into my home in a wheelbarrow! She doesn't belong in our world, Alejandro!"
"She is my mother," I roared, slamming my fist onto the mahogany table so hard the crystal glasses shattered. "And this is my home."
I turned to my head of security, who was standing nervously by the entrance. "Lock the gates. Nobody leaves this estate—not my wife, not the housekeepers, and none of these guests—until I find out where my mother went."
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I grabbed my coat, ignoring Veronica's screams as she grabbed my arm, her manicured nails digging into my sleeve. I shoved her hand off me, grabbed my car keys, and ran out into the pouring rain.
My mother had walked out into the dark with nothing but a worn bag and a heart broken for the second time. I had failed her fifteen years ago because I was naive. I refused to fail her tonight.
