PART 38: ISABELLA’S BETRAYAL
I stared at Ernesto’s final message.
ISABELLA WORKS FOR VICTORIA.
“No,” I whispered.
Clara took the paper from my hand.
“Ernesto would not use his final breath to lie.”
Patricia searched Isabella’s abandoned chair.
Beneath it, she found a small transmitter.
It had been broadcasting every conversation in the hospital directly to Victoria.
Isabella had not been kidnapped during the gas attack.
She had walked away willingly.
Every clue she gave us.
Every recording she revealed.
Every tear she cried.
All of it had guided us toward the vault.
Julian struck the wall.
“She used us.”
But I remembered Isabella tied to the chair.
The bruise on her face.
The terror in her voice.
“Or Victoria forced her.”
Clara shook her head.
“Isabella has worked for Victoria for fifteen years.”
She revealed that Isabella’s supposed death had been Victoria’s idea. After Ernesto was poisoned, Isabella disappeared and became Victoria’s most trusted courier.
She moved money.
Delivered threats.
Silenced witnesses.
And watched our family destroy itself.
“Why would she do that?” I asked.
Clara’s answer broke something inside me.
“Because Victoria promised to return her daughter.”
I could barely speak.
“Isabella has a child?”
“A daughter named Sofia.”
Victoria had taken Sofia as an infant and hidden her overseas. For fifteen years, Isabella obeyed every command because she believed obedience was the only way to keep her alive.
Then Patricia discovered something inside the transmitter.
A stored audio message.
She pressed play.
Isabella’s voice filled the corridor.
“If you find this, Victoria already has me. Do not trust the photograph. Sofia died thirteen years ago. Victoria has been controlling me with prerecorded videos.”
A long pause followed.
Then Isabella began crying.
“I learned the truth three weeks ago. I am not taking Victoria to the vault. I am taking her there to kill her.”
The message ended.
Clara looked toward the windows.
Dawn was less than two hours away.
“If Isabella kills Victoria before the vault scans her identity, it will lock permanently.”
“And all the evidence disappears?” Julian asked.
Clara nodded.
Along with any chance of proving what Victoria had done.
We drove to the Vargas estate.
The gates stood open.
Inside, the house was dark.
A trail of blood led from the entrance to the basement.
We found Victoria beside the vault.
She was on her knees.
Isabella stood behind her with a gun pressed against her skull.
Victoria looked at me and smiled.
“My daughter finally arrived.”
“Step away from her, Isabella,” I said.
“She murdered my child.”
“If you shoot her, the evidence stays locked forever.”
“I don’t care about the evidence.”
Her finger tightened around the trigger.
Then Victoria laughed.
“Sofia is not dead.”
Isabella froze.
A light came on behind the vault’s glass door.
A young woman stood on the other side.
She looked exactly like Isabella.
Sofia placed both hands against the glass.
“Mom?”
Isabella dropped the gun.
Victoria seized it.
She aimed at me.
“Open the vault,” she ordered, “or I kill all three of you.”
But before I could move, Sofia shook her head desperately.
Then she wrote four words in the condensation covering the glass:
SHE IS NOT VICTORIA.
