# CHAPTER 18 — THE FORGOTTEN SON
Bruno aimed his weapon at Gabriel.
Lucia stepped away from him.
Gabriel raised his hands.
“I did not poison Alejandro.”
“You lied about your name,” Bruno said.
“My mother changed it before I was born.”
Alejandro studied him.
Gabriel was forty-two.
Older than Alejandro by three years.
The timeline fit.
“Salvatore was your father?”
“He visited us twice a year until my mother died. After that, Matteo placed me in school under another identity.”
Matteo again.
Always Matteo.
“Why work inside this house?” Alejandro asked.
“To learn what happened to my mother.”
“What happened?”
“She discovered the succession trust and threatened to expose Salvatore. Three days later, she disappeared.”
Gabriel looked at Sofia’s photograph.
“Sofia contacted me shortly before her death. She believed Salvatore was using my identity to control Kiara’s trust.”
“If you are the guardian, you benefit from my death.”
“Only if I can prove who I am. I cannot.”
Bruno searched Gabriel’s computer.
A hidden folder contained surveillance images of Alejandro, Lucia, Matteo, Reed, and Kiara’s eastern wing.
“You watched all of us,” Lucia said.
“I was looking for Kiara.”
“You knew she was alive?”
“I suspected.”
“When did you find the forgotten camera?”
Gabriel hesitated.
“Six months ago.”
Alejandro’s expression darkened.
“You told us you discovered it today.”
“I discovered the recording box six months ago. The drive had already been removed.”
“Why say nothing?”
“Because someone sent me a video of my mother. She may still be alive.”
Gabriel opened an encrypted file.
A gray-haired woman sat in a windowless room.
She held a newspaper dated two months earlier.
“If I told you about the camera,” Gabriel said, “they promised to kill her.”
Mara looked at the screen.
“The room looks like the one in Teresa’s photograph.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Michael Vale, my mother, and perhaps Daniel were held in the same facility.”
“What connects them?” Bruno asked.
“They all knew Kiara survived.”
A radio call came from the outer gate.
Bruno answered.
A delivery van had arrived without authorization.
The driver was gone.
Inside the van, guards found a wooden coffin.
Alejandro went outside.
Snow had begun falling lightly across the driveway.
The coffin sat open beneath the security lights.
Inside was no body.
Only a fresh white dress sized for a seven-year-old girl.
A card rested on top.
Alejandro opened it.
YOU HAVE UNTIL SUNRISE TO CHOOSE.
THE GIRL YOU LOST.
OR THE GIRL WHO SAVED YOU.
Behind him, Mara screamed.
May you like
Emma was no longer standing beside her.
The rabbit backpack lay alone in the snow.
