Chapter 10 - For three seconds, Nicolás Velasco ceased to be dangerous.
He became only a father staring into an empty crib.
The transformation was so complete, so devastating, that Sofía felt it like a physical blow. All his control, all his power, all his carefully trained violence vanished beneath a terror so raw it made him look almost young.
Then the dangerous man returned.
“Seal the house,” he said.
His voice did not rise. It did not need to.
Security moved. Doors locked. Gates sealed. Cameras pulled up. Staff gathered. Valeria’s scream echoed from the hallway when she saw the empty crib.
Sofía caught her before she hit the doorframe.
“No,” Valeria gasped. “No, no, no—”
“He is in the house,” Sofía said.
She did not know that.
She needed it to be true.
Nicolás held the pearl earring in his palm as if it were evidence and betrayal at once.
“Find my mother.”
“She is in the library,” a guard said through the radio. “With Don Esteban. She has not left.”
Nicolás’s eyes sharpened.
“Then someone planted it.”
Sofía forced herself to think.
Not panic. Not grief. Mechanism.
“Who knew the nursery routine?”
“Everyone in this house by now,” Valeria said, shaking.
“No. Who knew the exact moment Mateo would be sleeping alone?”
The answer came from the crib.
Not the crib itself.
The monitor.
Sofía looked at the small white device on the shelf. It had been installed after the welfare visit for medical observation. Dr. Ibarra’s nurses used it. So did Valeria. So did Nicolás.
Sofía picked it up.
A tiny red light blinked beneath the casing.
“Was this supplied by your team?”
Nicolás looked at his security chief.
The man went pale. “It was delivered with the medical equipment.”
Sofía opened the battery compartment.
Inside was a second transmitter.
Nicolás’s face went cold enough to frighten even his own men.
“Clara,” Sofía said.
“But she is in custody,” Valeria whispered.
Camila arrived breathless, phone in hand. “Not anymore. Transport vehicle was hit en route to federal holding. Clara escaped twenty minutes ago.”
Nicolás closed his eyes.
Only for one second.
When he opened them, he was no longer reacting.
He was hunting.
But Sofía grabbed his arm.
“Listen.”
Everyone froze.
Faintly, beneath alarms and radios, came a sound.
Not Mateo crying.
A lullaby.
Sung softly.
Off-key.
Sofía turned toward the old service corridor behind the nursery, the one once used by nannies decades earlier before renovations sealed half the passageways behind decorative panels.
“Where does that lead?”
Esteban appeared, breathing hard. “The chapel. And the east garden.”
Nicolás moved toward the panel.
Sofía stopped him. “If she has Mateo, she expects you.”
“She has my son.”
“And she may hurt him if the first thing she sees is your rage.”
His eyes burned into hers.
“I go first,” Sofía said.
“No.”
“She took him because she needs leverage. I am less threatening.”
“You are not expendable.”
The words struck both of them.
Valeria, pale and shaking, stepped forward. “She knows Mateo calms with Sofía.”
That settled it.
Nicolás hated it.
But he opened the hidden corridor and let Sofía enter first.
The passage was narrow, stale, and dimly lit by emergency lamps. Dust clung to the walls. Behind her, Nicolás followed silently, gun lowered but ready. Sofía did not look at it. She focused on the lullaby.
The chapel had not been used in years.
Moonlight fell through stained glass, painting the floor in broken colors. At the front, beneath a carved wooden cross, Clara Voss stood holding Mateo.
The baby was wrapped in a blanket.
Not cotton.
Silk.
Sofía’s heart slammed.
Mateo’s face was red. He squirmed, whimpering, building toward the scream that had haunted the mansion for weeks.
Clara smiled when she saw them.
“Stop there.”
Nicolás stopped.
Sofía took one step forward.
Clara tightened her grip.
“I said stop.”
Sofía raised both hands. “The blanket is hurting him.”
Clara looked down as if mildly curious. “It got his father here.”
“Nicolás is here. You have what you wanted. Let me remove it.”
“I want passage out.”
Nicolás’s voice was deadly calm. “Give me my son.”
Clara laughed. “You really don’t negotiate well.”
Mateo cried louder, his tiny body arching.
Sofía kept her eyes on him. Not on Clara. Not on the weapon visible beneath Clara’s jacket. On the baby.
“He is reacting again,” she said. “If his skin breaks, infection risk rises. If he overheats from screaming, his breathing can worsen. You need him alive as leverage. I can keep him calm.”
Clara hesitated.
There.
The practical seam.
Sofía stepped closer slowly.
“Nicolás stays there,” Clara said.
“He will.”
Nicolás’s jaw clenched but he did not move.
Sofía approached as she would approach a frightened animal, because desperate people and frightened animals often needed the same thing: no sudden proof that the world was ending.
Mateo’s cry sharpened.
Sofía forced herself not to rush.
“Hi, sweet boy,” she whispered. “I know. I know.”
Clara’s eyes flicked toward the side door. “Hurry.”
Sofía reached for the blanket.
At the exact moment her hands touched Mateo, Clara shifted.
Sofía saw the move before she understood it.
Clara was not handing over the baby.
She was reaching for the syringe hidden in the blanket fold.
Sofía acted without thinking.
She pulled Mateo against her chest and turned her body away.
Clara lunged.
Nicolás moved.
The chapel exploded into motion. Clara hit the floor hard, the syringe skittering beneath a pew. Mateo screamed against Sofía’s shoulder. Nicolás pinned Clara down with one knee and a fury so controlled it was more frightening than shouting.
“Do it,” Clara hissed. “Show her what you are.”
Sofía looked up.
Nicolás’s hand was around Clara’s throat.
Not crushing.
Yet.
But close enough.
Mateo screamed.
The sound tore through the chapel.
Nicolás looked at his son.
Then at Sofía.
She said only one word.
“No.”
His hand opened.
He stepped back as his men rushed in.
Clara laughed, breathless. “Mercy looks ugly on you.”
Nicolás’s voice was cold. “It is not mercy. It is evidence.”
Police took Clara alive.
Dr. Ibarra examined Mateo immediately. His flare was painful but not severe. The silk had touched him long enough to redden his skin, not long enough to undo all his healing.
Still, Valeria nearly collapsed when Sofía placed him in her arms.
This time, Mateo cried.
And Valeria did not give him back.
She held him through it, rocking, whispering, staying.
Slowly, impossibly, he calmed.
Nicolás watched from the doorway.
His face was wet.
No one mentioned it.
Later, after statements and doctors and officers and the endless machinery of consequences, Sofía found him alone in the chapel.
He stood where Clara had fallen, staring at the floor.
“You stopped,” she said.
He did not turn. “Because you told me to.”
“No. Because Mateo was watching.”
“He is a baby.”
“He is your baby.”
Nicolás looked at her then.
“I wanted to kill her.”
“I know.”
“I still do.”
“I know.”
“Does that disgust you?”
Sofía walked closer.
“It frightens me.”
“That is not the same answer.”
“No.”
Moonlight touched the side of his face.
He looked less like a mafia boss then. Less like a legend. More like a man standing at the edge of all he had inherited, deciding whether to pass it down.
“I do not know how to be different,” he said.
Sofía’s heart ached despite every warning she had given herself.
“Start with not calling cruelty strength.”
His mouth tightened. “And if I fail?”
“Then Mateo pays.”
That landed harder than comfort would have.
He nodded once.
From the hallway, Mateo made a small sound in Valeria’s arms.
Nicolás turned toward it as if pulled by prayer.
Sofía followed.
But in the doorway, he stopped.
“Sofía.”
She looked back.
His voice was quiet.
“When this ends, do not disappear.”
She should have said no.
Instead, she said the truth.
“I don’t know how to stay in a house that was built to swallow women like me.”
May you like
He looked at the mansion around them.
“Then help me tear out its teeth.”
