Chapter 2 - THE DOOR IN THE NORTH WING

The music stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Mateo pressed himself against the headboard and covered both ears.

His entire body shook.

Valeria moved closer but did not touch him until he reached for her first.

The moment his fingers closed around her wrist, she sat beside him.

“I hear it too,” she whispered.

That mattered.

She could see it in his eyes.

Everyone else had spent two years telling Mateo that his fear was unreasonable.

Valeria did not tell him there was nothing to be afraid of.

She told him he was not imagining the sound.

Footsteps approached in the hallway.

Alejandro entered with two guards behind him.

“What happened?”

Valeria pointed toward the north wing.

“A music box played.”

Alejandro’s expression hardened.

“That wing is empty.”

“It was not empty a minute ago.”

One guard looked at the other.

Alejandro noticed.

“Search it.”

The guards hesitated.

The hesitation was small, but it was enough.

Alejandro’s voice dropped.

“Now.”

They hurried away.

Mateo watched the doorway with terrified concentration.

Valeria handed Alejandro the drawing.

“Did he make this before or after the music?” he asked.

“Before.”

Alejandro stared at the black-winged shape above the car.

His thumb moved over the woman in red.

“Camila wore a red dress the day she died.”

Valeria felt the room become colder.

“And the man?”

“I do not know.”

“You do not sound certain.”

Alejandro looked at the silver circle Mateo had drawn around the man’s neck.

“Many men around me wear medallions.”

“What does the letter mean?”

“I do not know that either.”

Mateo made a sharp sound.

He grabbed the paper and struck the letter with one finger.

“N,” Valeria said.

Mateo shook his head violently.

“Not N?”

He struck the page again.

Alejandro crouched several feet away.

“What are you trying to tell us, hijo?”

Mateo’s face closed.

He crumpled the drawing and threw it across the room.

Alejandro flinched as though the paper had struck him.

Valeria retrieved it.

“You do not have to explain it today,” she told Mateo.

The guards returned fifteen minutes later.

“No one is inside,” Captain Salcedo reported.

He was a broad-shouldered man with a scar near his left temple and the rigid posture of a soldier.

“All windows are secured.”

“All rooms?” Alejandro asked.

“Yes, señor.”

“The music box?”

“We found none.”

Valeria watched Salcedo’s face.

He did not look at Mateo.

He did not look toward the drawing.

His eyes remained fixed on Alejandro.

Too carefully.

“Who has keys to that wing?” she asked.

Salcedo turned toward her with immediate irritation.

“That does not concern the cleaning staff.”

“She is not cleaning today,” Alejandro said.

Salcedo’s jaw tightened.

“You, me, Doña Socorro, and Señora Elena,” he answered.

Valeria looked at Alejandro.

“Who is Elena?”

“My mother.”

The way he said it carried no warmth.

“Does she live here?”

“She lives in another property.”

“Could she have come inside?”

“No.”

Captain Salcedo cleared his throat.

“Señora Elena is in Madrid.”

Alejandro’s gaze sharpened.

“I know where my mother is.”

Salcedo lowered his head.

“Of course.”

The guard left.

Valeria waited until his footsteps faded.

“He did not search every room.”

Alejandro looked at her.

“You have been here less than one day.”

“He answered too quickly.”

“You think my head of security is lying?”

“I think frightened people either say too much or too little.”

“And which did he do?”

“Both.”

Alejandro studied her, then took the crumpled drawing.

“Stay with Mateo.”

“Where are you going?”

“To search the wing myself.”

Mateo released a panicked cry.

Alejandro stopped at the door.

The boy shook his head and pointed at his father, then at the floor.

“You want me to stay?” Alejandro asked.

Mateo struck the mattress with both hands.

Valeria understood before Alejandro did.

“He does not want you to go alone.”

Alejandro’s face changed.

It was the first clear sign that Mateo’s fear might be directed at a real threat.

He called for six additional guards and ordered the north wing sealed from both ends.

No one entered.

No one left.

For the rest of the afternoon, Mateo refused to leave Valeria’s side.

She fed him small pieces of bread and fruit from the lunch tray.

He ignored the expensive food and ate only the plain tortillas.

When she began folding a napkin into a little bird, he watched her hands.

“My mother taught me this,” she said.

She made the paper wings move.

Mateo touched one carefully.

“Her birds were better.”

He looked up.

“She could make a whole family.”

Valeria folded a smaller bird and placed it beside the first.

“This one is you.”

Mateo pushed it away.

“You do not want to be the small bird?”

He selected the black pencil and colored the larger bird until it became dark.

Then he tore the smaller bird in half.

Valeria did not react.

She waited.

Mateo took the torn pieces and hid them beneath the pillow.

The gesture did not look angry.

It looked protective.

Before evening, Alejandro ordered every lock in the north wing replaced.

Valeria watched the locksmiths work from Mateo's doorway.

Each man arrived under guard, used tools counted before and after the job, and left through a separate entrance.

The precautions should have made the house feel safer.

Instead, they revealed how little Alejandro trusted the people already inside it.

Mateo refused lunch until Valeria carried the tray to the floor and ate one piece of fruit herself.

Only then did he take food from the opposite side.

She noticed he always inspected cups before drinking.

He smelled the milk.

He touched the rim with one finger.

Then he pushed it away.

"Does milk make you feel sick?" she asked.

Mateo stared at the glass and struck the mattress once.

The gesture was not an answer she understood, but she remembered it.

Children who could not speak often built languages from repetition.

Adults failed them when they refused to learn.

Alejandro returned with a box of Camila's photographs from storage.

He placed them on the bed one at a time.

Mateo ignored wedding pictures, formal portraits, and photographs of family vacations.

He reacted only to an image of Camila seated beneath a jacaranda tree with Doña Socorro standing behind her.

In the corner of the photograph, almost hidden by branches, Elena watched from a balcony.

Mateo tapped Elena's face and then pointed toward the north wing.

Alejandro asked whether his grandmother had entered Camila's rooms.

Mateo became rigid and pushed every photograph onto the floor.

Valeria stopped Alejandro from repeating the question.

"He answered," she said.

"He threw pictures."

"He told you the question hurt."

Alejandro looked at the scattered images.

He had spent years forcing answers from men who feared him.

With his son, force produced only silence.

He gathered the photographs without argument.

Later, Valeria found a tiny crescent-shaped scratch near the silver key's handle.

The same crescent appeared carved into the wooden music box in an old photograph.

The key had not merely belonged to Camila.

It had been marked for Mateo.

Someone expected him to use it when he was old enough to understand.

That evening, Alejandro brought a child psychologist named Dr. Lucía Ferrer.

She was in her late thirties, dressed simply, and unlike the others, she carried no medical bag into Mateo’s room.

She sat on the floor near the door.

“I am not here to make you talk,” she told him.

Mateo ignored her.

“I am not here to touch you.”

He watched her from beneath his lashes.

“I only want to sit where you can see me.”

Valeria noticed that Lucía did not use the word safe.

Perhaps she understood that safety had to be demonstrated, not announced.

After several minutes, Lucía turned to Valeria.

“What happened before he embraced you?”

Valeria described the statue, the kicking, and the words she had used.

Lucía listened without interruption.

“You acknowledged the harm without shaming him,” she said.

“I told him he hurt me.”

“That was important.”

“Why?”

“Because traumatized children are often surrounded by adults who lie about pain.”

Alejandro stood near the window.

“What does that mean?”

“It means they tell the child nothing happened.”

Lucía looked at Mateo.

“They say the screaming is bad behavior.”

“They say the fear is irrational.”

“They say the child is dangerous instead of asking what danger the child still sees.”

Alejandro’s eyes darkened.

“Are you accusing me?”

“I am describing what may have happened around him.”

Mateo suddenly slid off the bed.

He walked to the wardrobe and removed a wooden puzzle box.

He carried it to Valeria, not Lucía.

Inside were dozens of small objects.

A broken watch.

A toy wheel.

A dried flower.

A brass button.

A tiny silver key.

Mateo picked up the key and placed it in Valeria’s palm.

Alejandro crossed the room.

“I have never seen that.”

Mateo closed Valeria’s fingers around it.

Lucía spoke softly.

“Do you know what it opens?”

Mateo looked toward the north wing.

No one needed an answer.

Alejandro ordered the key tested against every lock in the sealed corridor.

He insisted Mateo remain in the east wing.

Valeria agreed until midnight, when she woke in a chair beside the child’s bed and discovered the blankets empty.

The door stood open.

A line of folded paper birds stretched along the hallway floor.

One after another.

They led toward the north wing.

Valeria followed them with a lamp in one hand and the silver key in the other.

The mansion was silent.

At the sealed doors, both guards were missing.

One door stood slightly open.

A cold draft moved through the gap.

“Mateo?” she whispered.

No answer came.

She entered.

Dust covered the corridor, but a line of small footprints marked the floor.

The air smelled faintly of jasmine perfume.

At the far end, a soft golden light spilled from beneath a door.

Valeria approached and heard a child breathing on the other side.

The silver key fit the lock.

She turned it.

Inside was a nursery preserved exactly as it had been two years earlier.

A red dress hung behind a glass cabinet.

A family photograph rested beside a music box.

Mateo stood in the middle of the room, staring at the wall.

Someone had written a message across the wallpaper in fresh black paint.

THE BOY REMEMBERS.

Valeria rushed toward him.

The door slammed shut behind her.

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Then a man’s voice spoke from the darkness.

“You should have listened when they told you not to come here.”