My hands shook harder.
There is one more truth, my son. Henry and Rosa love you, but everyone around them does not. Rosa’s sister sold information once. Your cousin followed Octavio’s men for money. If they learn who you are, they will hand you over smiling.
My aunt.
My cousin.
Their hatred of Eleanor had not come from concern.
It had come from fear.
The road ahead narrowed between dark trees. Rain began to strike the windshield.
At the bottom of the letter, my mother had written one final sentence.
When you see the blue chapel, dig beneath the angel with the broken wing.
I looked up.
“What is the blue chapel?”
Mateo’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“The place your mother buried the evidence that can destroy Octavio Serrano.”
A pair of headlights appeared behind us.
Then another.
Then four more.
Mateo cursed.
“They found the exit.”
The vehicles gained on us, engines roaring through the storm.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I looked down.
It was my father.
For a moment, I did not answer. Then I placed the phone to my ear.
“Travis?” Henry’s voice broke. “Where are you?”
I swallowed hard. “Who am I?”
Silence.
Then a sob.
“My son.”
“No. Tell me who I am.”
His breathing came rough and ragged.
“You are Daniel Reyes’s child. Isabel’s son. But you are also mine. Because blood may begin a life, but love raises it.”
Behind us, gunfire flashed.
The back window exploded.
I ducked as glass sprayed over my neck.
Mateo shouted, “Hold on!”
The truck swerved violently, tearing through a wooden fence and plunging onto a muddy back road.
My father screamed through the phone, “Listen to me! Don’t trust your cousin Martin. He’s with them!”
My heart dropped.
At that exact moment, a message appeared on my screen.
From Martin.
Turn around, cousin. Eleanor is already dead.
PART 5 — The Angel with the Broken Wing
I stared at Martin’s message until the letters blurred.
Eleanor is already dead.
The words entered me like cold knives, one after another. I could not accept them. Not Eleanor, who had held my secrets gently. Not Eleanor, who had walked into danger with a calm face and trembling hands. Not Eleanor, who had married me not to deceive me, but to shield me with the last legal weapon she had.
“Is it true?” I whispered.
Mateo didn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
Something inside me went quiet.
Not peaceful.
Dangerously quiet.
The road became a ribbon of mud under the storm. Behind us, the pursuing vehicles skidded and roared, their headlights jumping like wolves’ eyes. Mateo drove as though he had made peace with death long ago.
“Where is the chapel?” I asked.
“Twenty minutes.”
“We don’t have twenty minutes.”
“No,” he said. “We have eight.”
He slammed the brakes, spun the wheel, and sent the truck sliding beneath an abandoned railway bridge. The pursuing cars shot past on the main road, one after another.
Mateo killed the lights.
We sat in darkness as rain hammered the roof.
My phone buzzed again.
Martin.
You were always stupid. That old woman made you feel special, and you swallowed it whole. Come back before worse things happen to Henry.
My blood turned to ice.
Henry.
I called my father again. No answer.
Again.
No answer.
“Drive,” I said.
Mateo looked at me.
“They have my father.”
“They may be baiting you.”
“Then I’ll bite with teeth.”
For the first time, Mateo smiled faintly.
“You are Isabel’s son.”
We reached the blue chapel just before dawn.
It stood on a hill beyond an old cemetery, small and forgotten, its paint faded by decades of sun. One bell hung crookedly in the tower. Wild vines had crept over the entrance, and rainwater ran down the steps like tears.
Inside, the chapel smelled of dust and candle wax. Broken saints watched us from niches in the walls. At the front stood a marble angel, its face turned toward heaven.
One wing was missing.
Mateo handed me a crowbar.
“Your mother came here the night before she died. She had blood on her dress and you in her arms. She dug for twenty minutes while I watched the road.”
I knelt beneath the angel and began to pry at the stone floor.
Every scrape echoed.
Every breath felt stolen.
Finally, one tile lifted.
Beneath it lay a metal box wrapped in oilcloth.
My mother had hidden it herself.
I opened it with shaking hands.
Inside were ledgers, photographs, cassette tapes, property deeds, and a small silver necklace with a blue stone. But beneath them all was a sealed envelope marked with my name.
Not Travis.
Sebastián Daniel Reyes Serrano.
My real name looked strange and beautiful, like a door opening.
Mateo stared at the ledgers.
“This is enough to ruin him.”
I lifted one photograph.
Octavio Serrano stood beside men in military uniforms, politicians, judges, and police chiefs. There were dates, account numbers, signatures.
Then I found a photo of my real father.
Daniel Reyes was young, handsome, and smiling at someone beyond the frame. On the back, my mother had written: He believed goodness could survive power. I loved him for that.
I pressed the photograph to my chest.
A noise came from outside.
A footstep.
Mateo raised his gun.
“Stay behind me.”
But before he reached the door, a voice called from the rain.
“Travis?”
My body froze.
That voice.
My father.
Henry stumbled into the chapel with blood on his forehead, his shirt torn, his hands bound in front of him.
“Dad!”
I ran toward him, but Mateo grabbed me.
“Wait.”
Henry shook his head desperately. “No, son. Don’t come closer.”
A red dot appeared on his chest.
Then on mine.
Then on Mateo’s.
Men emerged between the cemetery stones.
At their center walked a silver-haired man beneath a black umbrella.
