CHAPTER 7 Unit Seven
The old Alcázar estate sat beyond the hills outside Monterrey, hidden behind stone walls and cypress trees.
Sebastián had not entered the property in eight years.
His father died there.
Rebeca refused to sell it.
She claimed the house held too many memories.
Now Sebastián understood that memories were not the only things it held.
Police vehicles surrounded the estate before noon. Officers forced open the main gates and moved through the house room by room.
Valeria stayed in the ambulance parked outside.
Doctors insisted she should remain hospitalized, but she refused to be separated from the search for her son.
Natalia sat beside her, holding Mateo.
The baby had calmed against her chest.
“You look natural with him,” Valeria said.
Natalia looked down.
“That’s dangerous.”
“Why?”
“Because every time I hold a child, I wonder whether I’m remembering my son or replacing him.”
Valeria understood more than she wanted to.
A detective approached the ambulance.
“We found the entrance.”
Sebastián came behind him.
His face was gray.
“You should stay here,” he told Valeria.
“No.”
“The stairs are narrow.”
“I gave birth five hours ago. I can walk down a staircase.”
He started to argue.
She looked at him.
“Don’t become another person who decides what I can survive.”
He said nothing after that.
The entrance to Unit Seven was hidden behind a wine cellar wall.
A coded lock opened with Rebeca’s fingerprint after police brought her to the estate under guard.
She stood in the cellar wearing the same ivory suit, though one sleeve was stained and her pearl earrings were gone.
When the wall opened, cold air rushed into the room.
A corridor descended underground.
The walls were white.
The floor smelled of antiseptic.
At the bottom, they found six hospital rooms, a nursery, a pharmacy, and a small operating theater.
Everything was clean.
Recently used.
But empty.
Valeria moved from crib to crib.
No baby.
On one wall, photographs had been arranged in rows.
Infants.
Children.
Teenagers.
Some pictures were marked with dates.
Others with family names.
Natalia reached toward one image with shaking fingers.
A boy of about ten stood beside a horse.
Behind his left ear was a crescent-shaped birthmark.
“My son.”
Below the picture was a name.
Gabriel Reyes.
A note had been written beneath it.
PLACEMENT SUCCESSFUL. NO MATERNAL CONTACT.
Natalia pulled the photograph from the wall.
Rebeca watched from the doorway.
“I gave him a good life.”
Natalia turned.
“You gave him a lie.”
“A lie can be kinder than the truth.”
“That is what monsters tell themselves.”
Valeria continued scanning the photographs.
She saw Mateo’s picture.
She saw babies with identification codes.
Then she found a photograph that made her stop.
It showed herself.
Not as an adult.
As a teenager.
She was asleep in a hospital bed.
A date had been printed beneath the image.
Fifteen years earlier.
Sebastián stepped beside her.
“What is that?”
Valeria could not answer.
She remembered the hospital.
She remembered waking with blood on the sheets.
She remembered her mother telling her the pregnancy had ended before the baby could survive.
She had been seventeen.
She had never told Sebastián.
Not because she wanted to deceive him.
Because she had buried that part of herself so deeply that speaking about it felt like reopening a grave.
Sebastián looked at the date.
Then at her.
“You were pregnant?”
Valeria closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Natalia moved closer.
“What happened to the baby?”
“My mother said she died.”
Nobody looked at Rebeca.
Not at first.
Then everyone did.
Rebeca’s silence answered before her mouth could.
Valeria walked toward her.
“You knew me before I met Sebastián.”
Rebeca said nothing.
“You knew who I was.”
“I knew your family.”
“You knew about my baby.”
Rebeca looked at the photograph.
“Yes.”
Valeria slapped her.
The officers moved, but Sebastián raised a hand.
Rebeca touched her cheek.
“You believe violence makes you different from me?”
“Where is my daughter?”
Sebastián stared at Valeria.
“Daughter?”
Valeria’s voice broke.
“The doctor told my mother it was a girl.”
Rebeca looked toward the wall of photographs.
“You were a child.”
“So was Natalia.”
“You had no money. No father willing to claim the baby. Your mother signed the papers.”
“My mother told me she died.”
“Your mother was paid.”
Valeria nearly collapsed.
Sebastián caught her.
She pushed him away.
Not because she blamed him.
Because she could not bear anyone’s hands on her.
Natalia stood beside her.
“Which picture?”
Rebeca’s eyes moved toward the far end of the wall.
Valeria followed them.
There was a photograph of a girl with dark hair and serious eyes.
She looked about fourteen.
The caption beneath it read:
EMILIA VEGA
PLACEMENT SUSPENDED
SPECIAL STATUS
Valeria pulled the picture down.
“Where is she?”
Rebeca’s face became cautious.
“With people who protected her.”
“From whom?”
“From you.”
Valeria turned so sharply that pain cut through her abdomen.
“You don’t get to say that.”
“You had episodes after the delivery.”
“I was told my child was dead.”
“You tried to enter the nursery with a knife.”
Valeria froze.
Sebastián stared at her.
She remembered flashes.
A hallway.
A locked door.
A metal object in her hand.
Her mother screaming.
Doctors holding her down.
But she had always believed those memories came from medication.
Rebeca looked toward Sebastián.
“She never told you because she knew what it would prove.”
Valeria’s breath quickened.
Natalia held up the recorder.
“Nothing she says can be trusted.”
Rebeca looked at her daughter.
“Then ask Valeria why some of the bruises on her legs match the shape of the metal bed rail she used on herself.”
Sebastián’s head turned toward Valeria.
She looked away.
Because that part was true.
Not all the bruises.
But some.
Valeria had created them herself.
She had needed Sebastián to see something he could not dismiss.
She had believed visible pain was the only language he would understand.
Before anyone could speak, a police officer shouted from the nursery.
They rushed inside.
One crib was still warm.
On the mattress lay a blue bracelet.
Valeria grabbed it.
Her son’s name had finally been written across it.
NICOLÁS ALCÁZAR.
Beneath the bracelet was a note.
If you want Nicolás alive, bring Mateo to the chapel before sunset.
Natalia tightened her arms around the baby.
Valeria looked at her.
Two mothers.
May you like
Two children.
One impossible demand.
