All of it.
My father owned pieces of almost everything.
Or at least, someone connected to him did.
I suddenly remembered how often my father had complained about the town.
“Too many old buildings.”
“Too many small businesses.”
“Someone needs to modernize this place.”
I had always assumed he was talking about development.
But maybe he wasn’t.
Maybe he was talking about ownership.
A police officer took the document from my hands.
“We need to get this into evidence.”
Jimena grabbed my arm.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s another copy.”
“Where?”
She looked at me.
“At home.”
My heart dropped.
“Whose home?”
She whispered,
“Yours.”
I couldn’t speak.
“My house?”
She nodded.
“They put something there before I disappeared.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because I heard them talking.”
“Who?”
“Rodrigo.”
My stomach twisted.
“What did he say?”
Jimena looked toward Diego.
Then back at me.
“He said the papers had to stay in your house because if anyone ever searched for them, you would be the first person they would suspect.”
I looked at my son.
Then at the officers.
Then at the open back door.
Something inside me suddenly became very clear.
This wasn’t just about finding Jimena.
It had never been.
Jimena had discovered something.
Something about our father.
Something about Rodrigo.
Something about the property.
And someone had decided that a sixteen-year-old girl was dangerous enough to disappear.
I took out my phone.
There were twelve missed calls.
All from Rodrigo.
Then a new message appeared.
Where are you?
Another message arrived seconds later.
I know you found her.
I stared at the screen.
A third message.
Don’t bring her home.
My hands went cold.
Then the final message appeared.
Because your house is already being watched.
I looked up.
Through the front window of Modern Cleaners, across the street, I could see our neighborhood.
Our house.
Our driveway.
And parked two houses away was a dark SUV.
The engine was running.
Someone was sitting inside.
Watching.
The officer followed my gaze.
“Do you know that vehicle?”
I whispered,
“No.”
Jimena did.
She grabbed my arm so hard her fingernails dug into my skin.
“I do.”
“Who is it?”
She stared through the glass.
“That was the car they used when they took me.”
The officer immediately reached for his radio.
“Unit two, we have a possible suspect vehicle—”
The SUV’s headlights turned on.
Then it slowly began moving.
The officer ran outside.
Another officer followed.
The SUV accelerated toward the end of the street.
A cruiser pulled out behind it.
But before the car disappeared around the corner, the passenger window lowered.
A hand came out.
And something small was thrown onto the pavement.
The vehicle vanished.
The officer picked it up.
It was a blue hair tie.
Jimena’s blue hair tie.
The same one she had been wearing the morning she disappeared.
She stared at it.
Then she whispered,
“They’re telling us they know where we are.”
I looked at my little boy.
For the first time since Jimena vanished, I understood something terrifying.
Finding her had not ended the nightmare.
It had only opened the door.
And whatever waited on the other side had already entered my home.
PART 4
The blue hair tie lay in the officer’s gloved hand.
Nobody spoke.
Jimena was staring at it as if it were something alive.
I couldn’t stop looking at the empty street where the SUV had disappeared.
“They want us scared,” I whispered.
Jimena shook her head.
“No.”
Her voice was different now.
Older.
Colder.
“They want you to think they’re still in control.”
The officer turned toward her.
“What does that mean?”
Jimena looked at him.
“It means they’re going to make a mistake.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they already did.”
I stared at my sister.
“What mistake?”
She looked at me.
“Keeping me alive.”
My chest tightened.
“What?”
“They needed me to sign something.”
“What?”
“A statement.”
She swallowed.
“They wanted me to say Dad had given me permission to access some financial records.”
I didn’t understand.
“Why would they need you to say that?”
“Because I’m listed on something.”
“On what?”
She looked at the officer.
“An ownership document.”
The officer’s expression changed.
“What ownership document?”
Jimena looked directly at me.
“The one they were trying to make Dad transfer.”
My mind went back to the paper she had given me.
Alvarez Community Holdings.
My name.
Her name.
Our father’s name.
I suddenly understood why Jimena had been kidnapped.
She wasn’t just a daughter.
She was an obstacle.
She was a legal heir.
And someone wanted that obstacle removed before my father signed anything.
But there was still one question.
“Why didn’t they just kill you?”
Jimena looked down.
“Because they didn’t know where the original was.”
“The original of what?”
“The trust.”
I felt my stomach drop.
“What trust?”
She looked at me.
“Grandpa’s.”
My grandfather had died eleven years earlier.
As far as I knew, his estate had been settled long ago.
He had left my father the family business, some properties, and enough money for everyone to live comfortably.
At least, that’s what we had been told.
Jimena shook her head.
“Grandpa didn’t leave Dad everything.”
The officer looked between us.
“Then who inherited it?”
Jimena’s eyes filled with tears.
“You did.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“You did.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Grandpa created a private trust before he died.”
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“Because Dad hid it.”
The room seemed to tilt.
My father.
The man who had taught me how to ride a bicycle.
The man who had held Diego the first time he was born.
The man who had spent forty days pretending to search for Jimena.
He had been hiding an inheritance from me.
For years.
But why?
Jimena reached into her pocket and pulled out another folded paper.
“This is a copy.”
I opened it.
At the top was my grandfather’s name.
Below it was a list of properties.
My hands began trembling.
There were dozens.
Commercial buildings.
Apartment complexes.
Warehouses.
Land.
Even the block where we lived.
I stared at the final page.
There was a handwritten note.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
My grandfather.
If Mateo ever tries to sell these properties without the consent of my daughters, he has broken the trust. The original documents are to remain hidden until both girls are adults.
I looked at Jimena.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“The week before I disappeared.”
She lowered her eyes.
“I found the documents in Dad’s office.”
I stared at her.
“What were you doing in his office?”
“He asked me to print something.”
“And?”
“I saw the file.”
“What did you see?”
“A letter from Grandpa.”
She took a breath.
“Dad was trying to sell everything.”
The officer looked toward the other detective.
“We need a warrant.”
“No,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
“We don’t need to go to my house yet.”
The officer frowned.
“Why?”
“Because if they’re watching it, they’ll know we’re coming.”
Jimena nodded.
“She’s right.”
I looked at her.
“How do we get the original?”
She hesitated.
Then she said,
“Grandpa’s house.”
I stared at her.
The old house had been empty for years.
Nobody had lived there since his death.
My father had always told us there was nothing left inside.
Furniture had been sold.
Documents had been moved.
The property had supposedly been scheduled for renovation.
But now I remembered something.
When I was twelve, Grandpa had taken me into the basement.
He had shown me an old wooden cabinet.
“Some things are safer when nobody knows they exist,” he’d told me.
At the time, I thought he was talking about family photographs.
Maybe he wasn’t.
The police took Jimena to the hospital.
I wanted to go with her.
But before she was taken inside the ambulance, she grabbed my hand.
“Paola.”
“What?”
“Don’t trust Dad.”
I nodded.
Then she added,
“And don’t trust Rodrigo.”
My heart cracked.
“Jimena…”
“I saw him.”
“What?”
“The night they took me.”
She looked terrified.
“He wasn’t just there.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was helping them.”
The ambulance doors closed.
I stood there watching the lights disappear.
Then I turned to the officer.
“I need to go to my grandfather’s house.”
He shook his head.
“Absolutely not.”
“Then come with me.”
He hesitated.
I could see that he knew I was right.
If the original trust existed, it could explain everything.
The properties.
The kidnapping.
The fake transfers.
My father’s behavior.
Rodrigo’s involvement.
And perhaps the reason someone had been willing to threaten Diego.
We drove there with two police cars.
My grandfather’s house stood at the end of a quiet road surrounded by tall trees.
It looked exactly as I remembered.
White paint.
Green shutters.
A stone walkway.
The porch where Grandpa used to sit every Sunday morning.
The house looked peaceful.
Almost innocent.
But as soon as I stepped inside, I knew something was wrong.
The air smelled fresh.
Too fresh.
Someone had cleaned recently.
I walked through the hallway.
The furniture was covered in white sheets.
Dust should have covered everything.
But there were footprints on the floor.
Fresh ones.
The officer raised his hand.
Everyone stopped.
He pointed toward the basement door.
It was slightly open.
My heart began pounding.
We went downstairs.
The wooden cabinet was still there.
I touched the handle.
Locked.
I searched my memory.
Grandpa had once given me a small brass key.
I had kept it on a chain when I was a teenager.
After he died, I stopped wearing it.
But I had never thrown it away.
I reached into my purse.
There it was.
The key.
My hands shook as I inserted it.
The lock clicked.
Inside the cabinet was a metal box.
I opened it.
There was a letter.
A USB drive.
A set of property deeds.
And a photograph.
The photograph showed my grandfather standing beside two young girls.
Me.
And Jimena.
On the back was written:
For my girls. If you are reading this, your father has betrayed the family.
I felt tears running down my face.
I opened the letter.
It explained everything.
My grandfather had discovered that my father had been secretly borrowing against the family properties.
He had created the trust to protect them.
My father had spent years trying to find a loophole.
But he couldn’t sell the properties without both daughters’ consent.
When I became an adult, I became one of the legal trustees.
When Jimena turned sixteen, she became the second.
That was why she had been taken.
They needed her signature.
And they needed mine.
But there was another paragraph.
One that made my blood run cold.
Mateo does not know where the original trust agreement is.
I looked at the metal box.
The document inside was only a copy.
The original was somewhere else.
Then I noticed the USB drive.
The officer connected it to his laptop.
A video opened.
My grandfather appeared on the screen.
He looked older than I remembered.
Tired.
But his voice was steady.