Chapter 5 - The Priest at the Door
Elena swung the fire poker the moment the latch moved. It struck the intruder's wrist, and a metal tool clattered across the floor. The man outside cursed. His voice no longer sounded priestly.
Rafael triggered the carriage-house fire doors from his tablet. Steel shutters dropped through the old passage, dividing the intruder from the apartment. Mateo reached his daughters less than a minute later.
Sofia clung to Isabel. Lucia stared at the shutter as someone hammered from the other side.
"Father Tomas knows Mommy's song," Sofia whispered.
"That isn't Father Tomas," Mateo said.
He called the real priest on a secure line. Father Tomas answered from a retreat two hundred kilometers away. He had received a message, supposedly from Mateo, asking him to leave town for three days.
The impersonator fled before Rafael's guards reached the exterior. They found a clerical collar, silicone cheek pieces, and a small audio device in the passage. No fingerprints.
Camila had not merely bribed a housekeeper. She had assembled people who studied voices, routines, and trust.
They moved the girls again, this time through a storm tunnel leading beyond the estate wall. Rafael's vehicle waited beside the river. Elena and Isabel took Sofia and Lucia to a private clinic registered under another company. Mateo remained behind.
"You cannot stay," Rafael warned.
"Camila thinks I am cornered and unstable. I need her to keep thinking that."
"She may try to kill you."
"Then she will have to reveal who helps her."
Mateo returned to the main house through the greenhouse. Estate guards had gathered in the atrium. Camila stood on the staircase speaking with Dr. Samuel Voss, the psychiatrist who had treated Mateo after Valeria's death.
Dr. Voss carried a leather medical bag.
"Mateo," he said, "Camila is worried. Your daughters are missing, and witnesses saw you attack security staff. I would like to speak privately."
Mateo almost laughed. The health protocol required two physicians to certify that a family trustee was impaired. Voss could provide the first signature. The second might already be waiting.
"Where is Beatriz?" Mateo asked.
Camila answered, "Terrified. You accused her of starving children based on corrupted video."
"Bring her here."
"Not until you surrender your phone and tell us where the girls are."
Mateo looked around the atrium. Every guard wore an earpiece. Some avoided his eyes. On the upper balcony, the family attorney, Julian Mercer, watched with folded hands. Mercer had drafted the trust language that made Camila temporary trustee.
Too many people had arrived too quickly.
Mateo lifted both hands. "I will speak to Dr. Voss. In my study. Alone."
Camila smiled faintly, believing he had yielded.
Inside the study, Voss closed the door. Mateo placed his phone on the desk but kept a second recorder hidden in his cuff.
"You prescribed medication after Valeria died," Mateo said.
"You were not sleeping."
"Did Camila ever ask you to increase the dose?"
Voss's eyes shifted. "Your sister discussed your welfare."
"Did she ask you to document hallucinations?"
"You reported hearing Valeria's voice."
"From a recorder she left."
Voss opened his medical bag. "I can give you something mild."
Mateo saw the syringe.
"What is it?"
"A sedative."
"Show me the label."
The doctor hesitated.
Mateo moved first, twisting Voss's wrist and pinning him against the desk. The syringe fell. Rafael, listening remotely, sent a trusted guard through the side door.
Under pressure, Voss admitted that Camila paid him through a foundation. He had prepared reports describing Mateo as paranoid, violent, and incapable of managing the girls. He claimed he never knew about the starvation.
"Who is the second doctor?" Mateo asked.
Voss whispered a name.
Dr. Elena Navarro.
Mateo released him.
For a moment, the room lost focus.
Elena was with Sofia and Lucia.
His secure phone vibrated. A message from Elena appeared.
The girls are resting. We reached the clinic safely.
At the clinic, investigators found that the impostor had prepared the attack days earlier. A maintenance request had disabled one corridor camera. A delivery company had brought medical oxygen cylinders that were actually empty hiding compartments. Elena's emergency medication had been replaced with saline. This was not a hurried kidnapping after Mateo discovered the truth; it was a branch of a plan already waiting. Isabel recognized a scrap of blue fabric caught on the crypt gate. It came from the uniform worn at St. Aurelia Academy. She told Mateo that Valeria once woke from a nightmare repeating the school's name and begging someone not to ring the third bell. Mateo had assumed grief from childhood. Now every old silence in his marriage seemed to contain a locked room. He hated himself for wanting explanations from a woman who could no longer defend the choices she made while surrounded by enemies.
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Attached was a photograph of Sofia and Lucia sleeping.
In the mirror behind their bed stood a woman wearing Camila's pearl earrings.
