PART 34: BEFORE MIDNIGHT

The address led to St. Vincent’s Hospital.

It had been abandoned after a fire twelve years earlier.

At 11:38 p.m., Julian, Isabella, Adrian, and I entered through the emergency doors.

The electricity was still running.

Someone had prepared the building for us.

A trail of fresh blood led toward the elevator.

Beside it, a security monitor flickered to life.

Gabriel appeared on the screen.

“You have twenty-two minutes.”

“Where is Ernesto?” Julian demanded.

“Sixth floor. Room 614.”

“And our mother?”

Gabriel smiled.

“She is exactly where she chose to be.”

The elevator doors opened.

Inside was Ricardo.

His wrists were bound.

Blood covered his shirt.

He collapsed at our feet.

“Patricia betrayed me,” he gasped.

Adrian grabbed him.

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs—with Gabriel.”

“Who is Gabriel?”

Ricardo laughed weakly.

“You still think Gabriel is one man?”

He revealed that three people had used the identity over the years.

Adrian had worn Gabriel’s name while investigating our family.

The man who accompanied us to the church was someone else.

And the real Gabriel had supposedly died before Ernesto was poisoned.

“Then who took our mother?” I asked.

Ricardo’s face filled with fear.

“Ernesto’s son.”

Julian froze.

“I am Ernesto’s only son.”

“No,” Ricardo whispered. “You’re the son he raised.”

The elevator doors began closing.

A shot rang out from the dark corridor.

Ricardo jerked violently and fell backward.

Dead.

We spun toward the shooter, but the hallway was empty.

The elevator carried us upward.

Sixth floor.

Room 614.

Ernesto lay connected to a heart monitor.

Older.

Thin.

But alive.

My mother sat beside his bed with a gun pressed to her temple.

Gabriel stood behind her.

He removed his mask.

Julian staggered backward.

The face underneath looked almost identical to his.

“My name is Mateo,” the man said. “Ernesto was my father too.”

Julian stared at him.

“Why did he hide you?”

“He didn’t hide me. He abandoned me.”

Mateo explained that Ernesto had two families.

One public.

One secret.

While Julian grew up surrounded by wealth, Mateo and his mother lived in poverty. When she begged Ernesto for help, he denied that Mateo was his child.

“So you created the conspiracy?” I asked.

Mateo smiled.

“I created the fear. Greed did everything else.”

He had manipulated Ricardo.

Fed Patricia false information.

Blackmailed Dr. Keller.

And convinced my mother that killing Ernesto was the only way to save us.

“But Ernesto survived,” Isabella said.

“Yes. And for fifteen years, I kept him alive.”

“Why?”

Mateo looked at the clock.

11:57 p.m.

“Because tonight, he will finally tell the truth.”

He injected something into Ernesto’s IV.

The old man’s eyes opened.

Julian rushed to his bedside.

“Father?”

Ernesto looked at him with tears in his eyes.

Then he turned toward Mateo.

“I should have told you years ago.”

Mateo leaned closer.

“Told me what?”

Ernesto struggled to breathe.

“You are not my son.”

Mateo’s smile vanished.

Ernesto lifted one trembling finger and pointed at my mother.

“You are hers.”

My mother lowered the gun.

Her face crumbled.

“No,” she whispered. “That cannot be true.”

Ernesto’s heart monitor began screaming.

And before losing consciousness, he revealed the name of Mateo’s real father.

“Dr. Keller.”

Continue Read next part>>PART14: My daughter-in-law called to tell me my son had died and that I wouldn’t receive a single cent. I just smiled, because at that very moment, my son was sitting right next to me—alive, breathing, and listening to every word. Patricia spoke with the voice of a grieving widow. Julian squeezed my hand under the table. And when she said, “He won’t be in the way anymore,” I knew that the trap that had almost killed him had just snapped shut on her.