Chapter 16 - The Island
The operation began before sunrise.
Police boats approached from the south.
A helicopter held beyond visual range.
I was not supposed to be there.
I went anyway.
Carmen threatened to arrest me.
I told her she could do it after we found Lucia.
The island villa sat above cliffs.
Security cameras covered every approach.
Mateo had blueprints from an old Serrano Group renovation proposal.
A service tunnel connected the dock to the basement.
Police entered through it.
The first guards surrendered.
The second group did not.
Shots echoed through the stone corridors.
I stayed behind the tactical team.
Then I heard a woman scream.
Not Lucia.
Mercedes.
Officers found her in a control room trying to destroy drives.
She looked at me through the glass.
No fear.
Only hatred.
“You should have stayed in Dubai.”
I had heard those words before.
Beatriz had learned them from her.
“Where is Lucia?”
Mercedes smiled.
“Always the women.”
“What?”
“Your father ruined himself for his brother.”
“You ruined yourself for your first wife.”
“And now you’re destroying an empire for a child who will eventually hate you anyway.”
I stepped closer.
“You never understood family.”
“No.”
She smiled.
“I understood it perfectly.”
A tactical officer shouted from the lower corridor.
They found a locked medical room.
Inside was Lucia.
Alive.
For five years, I had rehearsed conversations with a dead woman.
Apologies.
Goodbyes.
Questions.
When I finally saw her, I could not speak.
She was sitting on a bed beneath a blanket.
She looked older.
Fragile.
But when her eyes met mine, I saw the woman I had loved.
“Gabriel?”
I knelt.
She touched my face.
“You came.”
“I’m sorry it took five years.”
She shook her head.
“Isabella?”
“Safe.”
Lucia began crying.
“Does she remember me?”
“Yes.”
That was not entirely true.
Isabella remembered pieces.
A song.
A perfume.
Warm hands brushing her hair.
But love sometimes survives where memory cannot.
We transported Lucia to a hospital under guard.
Mercedes was arrested.
The island computers contained enough evidence to destroy half her network.
But one file was missing.
The master account key.
Lucia told us Mercedes never found it.
“Where is it?”
Lucia looked at me.
“I gave it to Isabella.”
“When?”
“The morning of the crash.”
“She was three.”
“I hid it in something she would keep.”
“What?”
“A music box.”
My heart sank.
Isabella’s belongings had been moved into storage by Beatriz.
We returned to the villa.
The storage room had been emptied.
Every box was gone.
Security footage showed a truck removing them two weeks earlier.
The order carried my forged signature.
Destination unknown.
Then Isabella remembered.
“Beatriz gave my music box away.”
“To who?”
“She said a little girl needed it more.”
“When?”
“Before you came home.”
I called Carmen.
Beatriz was in custody.
We confronted her.
She stared at the table.
Lucia's hospital recovery was slow.
She disliked doors being fully closed.
She asked nurses to announce themselves before entering.
When Isabella first visited, both of them were afraid of disappointing the other.
They did not need a perfect reunion.
They needed time.
For once, nobody rushed them.
“Where is the music box?”
“I don’t know.”
I slammed my palm down.
“Where?”
Her eyes filled.
“Samuel took it.”
Samuel Cárdenas was still missing.
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And now the last key to Mercedes’s hidden fortune was with a man who had already betrayed everyone.
