CHAPTER 6 — THE VOICE FROM THE PAST
CHAPTER 6 — THE VOICE FROM THE PAST
No one spoke.
The old cassette rested on the evidence table like a bomb waiting to explode.
Alejandro stared at the faded handwriting.
"Play only if Alejandro finds the truth."
His fingers hovered over it.
Then he looked at the lead investigator.
"Document everything."
The investigator nodded.
A forensic technician photographed the cassette from every angle before placing it into an evidence player designed for fragile recordings.
The machine whirred.
Static filled the room.
For several long seconds...
There was nothing.
Then a woman's voice emerged.
Weak.
Tired.
But unmistakably familiar.
"Alejandro..."
His knees nearly gave way.
He knew that voice.
He hadn't heard it in twenty-one years.
His mother.
Isabella Castillo.
Tears filled his eyes.
"If you're listening to this..."
"...then I failed."
"I prayed you would never have to know."
Alejandro stood frozen.
The room was utterly silent.
"I don't have much time."
"They're watching."
"If they discover I'm recording this..."
"They'll kill me."
The tape crackled.
Then continued.
"My name is Isabella Castillo."
"I was never sick."
"I never died from cancer."
Alejandro's entire body went numb.
"What..."
The detective looked at him in disbelief.
The voice continued.
"I was taken."
"Just like Elena."
"I became their first prisoner."
Alejandro's breathing became ragged.
His mother...
Hadn't died.
She had disappeared.
His father had lied to him.
The tape continued.
"The woman responsible wasn't Vivian."
"She was only a child."
"The one you must fear..."
"...is her mother."
Every investigator exchanged nervous glances.
The room suddenly felt colder.
"I don't know her real name."
"Everyone called her..."
"The Matron."
The words hung in the air.
"I tried escaping four times."
"The fourth time..."
"She made an example of me."
Alejandro clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"They told the world I was dead."
"They even buried an empty coffin."
A detective immediately turned toward another officer.
"Verify the burial records."
The officer hurried out.
The tape continued.
"If you're hearing this..."
"The Matron has probably chosen someone else."
"She always chooses women connected to powerful families."
"They become trophies."
"They become leverage."
"They become prisoners."
Alejandro suddenly remembered something.
The survivors.
None of them had introduced themselves.
He turned toward the lead investigator.
"Find out who they are."
Hours later...
The answer arrived.
One by one, the files were placed on the conference table.
The first survivor...
The daughter of a federal judge.
The second...
The wife of a banking executive.
The third...
A journalist investigating organized crime.
The fourth...
A senator's campaign manager.
The fifth...
A pharmaceutical researcher.
The sixth...
The fiancée of a prosecutor.
The seventh...
The sister of an anti-corruption investigator.
And Elena...
The wife of one of the country's most influential businessmen.
None of it was random.
Each victim had been connected to someone with influence.
Someone who could be manipulated.
Someone who could be distracted.
Alejandro felt the pieces beginning to fit together.
"This wasn't obsession."
The detective nodded grimly.
"It was strategy."
Across town...
Vivian sat alone in her holding cell.
The steel door buzzed open.
She looked up.
A woman in an elegant gray suit entered carrying a leather briefcase.
"I'm your attorney."
Vivian smiled faintly.
"I never requested one."
The woman closed the door.
"You didn't have to."
She placed a folded piece of paper on the table.
There was only one sentence written on it.
Stay silent. Mother is watching.
For the first time since her arrest...
Vivian looked genuinely frightened.
She whispered,
"She's alive..."
The attorney said nothing.
She simply stood.
Collected the note.
Dropped it into a metal ashtray.
And burned it.
Within seconds...
The message was ash.
When the guard returned, the mysterious attorney was gone.
Security cameras later showed something impossible.
No one matching her description had ever entered the detention center.
Meanwhile...
Alejandro requested permission to exhume his mother's grave.
The court approved the emergency order before sunrise.
By noon...
The Castillo family cemetery was surrounded by police.
Television crews gathered beyond the gates.
Rain began falling as workers carefully lowered the coffin from the ground.
Alejandro stood silently beneath a black umbrella.
His heartbeat echoed in his ears.
The lid was slowly opened.
Every person present leaned forward.
Inside...
Was a skeleton.
But something was wrong.
The forensic anthropologist frowned.
After only a few moments of examination, she looked up.
"This isn't your mother."
Alejandro stared at her.
"What?"
She removed one of the bones for closer inspection.
"The remains belong to a male."
The cemetery fell silent.
A man.
Not a woman.
Not Isabella Castillo.
His mother's funeral...
His years of mourning...
The grave he had visited every birthday...
Had all been built on a lie.
Late that evening...
Alejandro returned to the mansion.
The estate was now an active crime scene.
As he entered Elena's old art studio, he noticed something he had somehow overlooked.
One canvas remained hanging on the wall.
Unlike the others, it had never been finished.
It showed only the outline of a woman standing beside a lake.
As he moved closer, he noticed tiny marks along the edge of the frame.
Not brushstrokes.
Letters.
Someone had carved them into the wood with a razor blade.
Too small to notice from a distance.
He carefully removed the frame.
Hidden beneath the canvas...
Folded into an impossibly thin space...
Was a yellowed envelope.
On the front, written in his mother's handwriting, were the words:
For Elena. Not for Alejandro.
Alejandro's breath caught.
How could his mother...
Who had supposedly disappeared decades earlier...
Have hidden a letter inside a painting Elena had created only four years ago?
He slowly turned the envelope over.
The wax seal had never been broken.
Just as he reached to open it...
His phone rang.
The caller ID displayed only two words.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
He answered.
A woman's calm voice whispered through the speaker.
"You've opened the first door."
A long pause followed.
Then she said the words that made Alejandro's blood run cold.
"But if you open that letter..."
May you like
"You'll lose Elena forever."
The line went dead.
