PART 3
The pounding on the bedroom door came again, harder this time, shaking dust from the old wooden frame.
“Mrs. Eleanor!” the man outside shouted. “They’re here. They’ve finally found him hb.”
The letter nearly slipped from my fingers.
Eleanor’s face changed in an instant. The trembling widow, the woman with tears running down her cheeks, vanished behind something colder, sharper, almost royal. She snatched her shawl from the bed and covered her shoulder, hiding the mark that had cracked my world open.
“Who found me?” I whispered.
She looked at me with pain so deep it frightened me.
“The people your mother died running from.”
I staggered back as if she had struck me.
“My mother died of a fever,” I said.
Eleanor shook her head.
“No, Travis. Your mother was murdered.”
The door burst open before I could breathe.
A tall man in a black suit rushed inside, one hand near the weapon beneath his jacket. His gray hair was cut short, his jaw clenched like stone.
“Madam, we have six vehicles at the south gate. Armed. They’re asking for the boy.”
“The boy?” I snapped. “I’m twenty-eight.”
The man glanced at me. There was no mockery in his eyes. Only urgency.
“To them, sir, you are still the boy they failed to bury.”
Eleanor grabbed the envelope, the keys, and the old letter, forcing them into my hands.
“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “Your name is not only Travis Cole. That is the name they gave you so you could survive.”
I could barely hear her over the thunder in my chest.
“What are you talking about?”
A gunshot cracked somewhere outside.
The musicians stopped.
Then came screaming.
Eleanor flinched, but she did not run.
“Your mother’s name was Isabel Serrano,” she said quickly. “She was not a poor woman abandoned by a dead husband. She was the only daughter of a powerful family—one that owned land, shipping routes, banks, and secrets. She fell in love with your real father, a man named Daniel Reyes, and married him in secret.”
“My father was Henry Cole,” I said, my voice breaking.
Eleanor’s eyes softened.
“Henry Cole raised you. He protected you. But he was not your blood.”
Another shot rang out, closer.
