Chapter 8 - The Room Behind the Nursery
The search for Inés changed the investigation.
A missing employee created urgency that stolen paintings alone could not.
Camila obtained access to traffic cameras, toll data, and employee records.
Meanwhile, Alejandro searched something more personal.
His childhood memories.
There had always been a room in the west wing no one used.
As a boy, he was told it had once been a nursery.
The door remained locked.
After Ricardo died, Esther renovated nearly every part of the mansion.
Not that room.
Alejandro suddenly remembered Inés once telling him his father kept old documents there.
He told Camila.
A warrant was approved that evening.
Investigators entered the mansion at 7:40 a.m. the next morning.
Esther was furious.
Marcela was not there.
The old nursery door was locked.
Esther claimed she had lost the key years ago.
Agents opened it.
Dust covered the furniture.
A faded blue wallpaper border ran along the walls.
An old wooden rocking horse stood near the window.
At first, nothing looked important.
Then a crime-scene technician noticed scratches beneath a built-in cabinet.
The cabinet moved.
Behind it was a narrow steel door.
Alejandro watched from the hallway.
He had lived thirty-seven years without knowing it existed.
The door opened into a small records room.
Metal shelves covered the walls.
Boxes were labeled with dates.
Shipping manifests.
Insurance certificates.
Private sale agreements.
Auction photographs.
And letters written by Ricardo Aranda.
One was addressed to Alejandro.
He recognized his father’s handwriting instantly.
Alejandro,
If you are reading this, then I failed to fix what I allowed to begin.
Your mother inherited a network of private collectors from her father.
At first, I believed the sales were merely discreet.
I was wrong.
Some works were stolen.
Some were removed from churches and private collections through bribery.
When I tried to stop it, Esther told me the family would be destroyed.
I chose silence.
That was my first failure.
My second was allowing Marcela to learn that silence protects powerful people.
Alejandro stopped reading.
His hands were trembling.
Valeria stood beside him.
He continued.
I am collecting evidence.
I intend to turn it over to authorities.
If anything happens to me before I do, trust Ignacio Beltrán.
Do not trust the family attorney.
And please understand this.
Protecting the Aranda name is not the same as protecting the Aranda family.
Alejandro closed his eyes.
His father had known.
He had tried to make it right.
Too late.
Camila entered the room.
“We found something else.”
She held up a photograph.
It showed Ricardo standing beside Warehouse 14.
Next to him was Inés.
And beside Inés stood a younger Marcela.
May you like
On the back, Ricardo had written one sentence.
INÉS SAW WHO CHANGED THE TRUCK.
