CHAPTER 3 The Locked Elevator
Sebastián stared at the empty hospital bed as though his mind had refused to accept what his eyes were seeing.
The sheets were twisted.
The IV bag swung from its pole.
A thin line of Valeria’s blood marked the floor and ended at the doorway.
“Nobody leaves this hospital,” he shouted.
The security guards looked confused.
One of them reached for his radio.
Static answered.
Natalia grabbed Sebastián’s arm.
“They planned this.”
“Where would they take her?”
“The private elevator.”
Octavio was still in the hallway.
Unlike everyone else, he did not look shocked.
He looked irritated.
Sebastián seized him by the collar.
“Where is my wife?”
Octavio lifted both hands.
“If you attack me, you will only strengthen the case that neither of you is fit to care for a child.”
Sebastián slammed him against the wall.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
Natalia stepped closer.
“He knows.”
Octavio’s gaze shifted toward her.
“You should have stayed hidden.”
“You should have checked whether I was still sedated before you discussed Valeria outside my room.”
That was when Octavio understood.
Natalia had not escaped by accident.
She had been listening.
Sebastián released him and ran toward the private elevator at the end of the corridor.
The display showed the car descending.
Floor six.
Floor five.
Floor four.
Natalia pressed the call button repeatedly.
“It won’t open,” she said. “Rebeca has an override key.”
Sebastián looked toward the stairwell.
They ran.
Two floors below, Valeria fought to remain conscious on a moving hospital gurney.
Rebeca walked beside her, one hand resting calmly on the metal rail.
“You are making this more painful than it needs to be.”
Valeria’s vision blurred.
“You drugged me.”
“We stabilized you.”
“You’re taking my child.”
“I’m saving him.”
Dr. Ríos pushed the gurney into the elevator while a nurse held an oxygen mask over Valeria’s face.
Valeria turned away from it.
“Sebastián will find me.”
Rebeca smiled.
“Sebastián has spent his entire life finding whatever I wanted him to find.”
The elevator descended toward a restricted underground level.
Valeria pressed her fingers against the underside of the mattress.
She found the small object Nurse Lucía had hidden there earlier.
A phone.
Valeria had not trusted the hospital staff, but she had trusted Lucía after the young nurse whispered that the medication orders did not match the doctor’s notes.
Valeria dragged the phone beneath the blanket.
Her fingers trembled as she opened the emergency call screen.
No signal.
The elevator walls were too thick.
She opened the camera instead and began recording.
Rebeca leaned close.
“You think you are the first woman to marry into this family and believe love gives her power?”
Valeria kept the phone hidden.
“I never wanted your power.”
“That is what powerless people always say.”
“I wanted my husband.”
“And that was your first mistake.”
The elevator doors opened onto an underground surgical wing.
No signs.
No public access.
No windows.
A second medical team waited inside.
Valeria saw an infant transport incubator beside the operating table.
It was already prepared.
A blue identification bracelet lay on top of it.
The name printed on the bracelet was not Valeria Alcázar.
It read:
MOTHER: UNKNOWN.
Valeria’s fear became something colder.
Something clearer.
This was not only about taking temporary custody.
They planned to erase her completely.
The nurse wheeled her into the operating room.
Valeria turned her head toward Rebeca.
“How many babies?”
For the first time, Rebeca hesitated.
Valeria saw it.
“How many mothers did you erase?”
Rebeca’s expression hardened.
“Enough to know that people believe documents before they believe frightened women.”
Upstairs, Sebastián and Natalia reached the ground floor.
The main elevator doors remained closed.
Sebastián struck the metal with his fist.
Natalia looked toward a security panel.
“There’s another level below the garage.”
“That level isn’t on the building plans.”
“It wasn’t on the clinic plans either.”
They rushed into the parking garage.
A black ambulance waited near a service door with its engine running.
Sebastián ran toward it.
The driver saw him and accelerated.
Sebastián barely jumped out of the way as the ambulance tore through the exit gate.
Natalia stared after it.
“That’s a decoy.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Rebeca never takes the obvious exit.”
A faint sound came from behind the service door.
A woman crying.
Sebastián forced it open.
Inside, Nurse Lucía was lying on the floor with her wrists tied.
She was conscious but bleeding from a cut above her eyebrow.
Sebastián knelt beside her.
“Where did they take Valeria?”
Lucía struggled to speak.
“Below.”
“How do we get there?”
She looked toward the wall.
“Laundry corridor. Hidden door. Code is your father’s death date.”
Sebastián went still.
His father had died in this hospital.
He had been treated by Dr. Ríos.
Rebeca had arranged everything.
Natalia cut Lucía’s restraints with a pair of medical scissors.
Lucía grabbed Sebastián’s sleeve.
“Listen to me. They aren’t taking the baby after the delivery.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re taking him during it.”
A scream echoed from somewhere beneath the floor.
Valeria.
Sebastián ran.
They found the laundry corridor and entered the code.
The wall unlocked.
Behind it was a narrow staircase leading underground.
As they descended, Natalia pulled the recorder from her pocket.
“If we get her out, you need to understand something.”
“Tell me later.”
“There may not be a later.”
Sebastián stopped.
Natalia looked at him with tears in her eyes.
“The child they are taking from Valeria is not the first Alcázar baby Rebeca stole.”
Sebastián stared at her.
Natalia’s voice broke.
May you like
“Seventeen years ago, she took mine.”
Below them, a newborn began to cry.
