PART 1 — THE BOY WHO DISAPPEARED
The mansion was in chaos by sunrise.
Servants rushed through hallways.
Security guards searched the gardens.
Phones rang nonstop.
But there was only one thing anyone cared about.
Diego was gone.
Mariana had barely slept.
After confronting Doña Regina and Alejandro the night before, she had remained awake in the guest suite, reviewing everything she had seen.
The bruises.
The fear.
The trembling in Diego's voice.
The way he flinched whenever someone raised a hand too quickly.
None of it felt normal.
None of it felt survivable.
And now the child had vanished.
At six-thirty in the morning, someone pounded on her bedroom door.
She opened it to find Alejandro standing there.
His face was pale.
"Diego's missing."
For a moment Mariana couldn't breathe.
"What do you mean missing?"
"We can't find him anywhere."
The search began immediately.
Every room.
Every hallway.
Every storage area.
The chapel.
The wine cellar.
The servants' quarters.
Nothing.
Doña Regina stood in the grand foyer issuing orders.
Her voice was cold and controlled.
"He couldn't have gone far."
But Mariana noticed something.
For a grandmother supposedly worried about her grandson, Regina seemed remarkably calm.
Too calm.
Almost irritated rather than frightened.
Hours later, one of the groundskeepers found something near the back gate.
A backpack.
Small.
Blue.
Diego's.
Inside were three things.
A flashlight.
His mother's old sweatshirt.
And a notebook.
Mariana opened it carefully.
Most of the pages contained drawings.
Airplanes.
Trees.
Dogs.
The ordinary sketches of a lonely ten-year-old boy.
Then she reached the final pages.
The drawings stopped.
The writing began.
Grandma says Mom abandoned me.
But Rosa said Mom loved me.
Dad gets angry when I ask questions.
I found Mom's box again.
I think somebody is lying.
Mariana's heart raced.
She continued reading.
Mom didn't die the way they said.
I heard Grandma yelling the night before.
I found the recording.
The recording.
Mariana froze.
At the bottom of the page, Diego had written one final sentence:
If anything happens to me, look inside the Virgin.
Inside the Virgin.
Mariana immediately looked toward the family chapel.
The same chapel where Regina had been praying the night before.
The same chapel containing the gold-covered statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Suddenly the pieces began falling into place.
And for the first time, Mariana wondered if Diego's bruises were only the beginning.
Because maybe the secret hidden in that house wasn't about child abuse.
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Maybe it was about murder.
And maybe Diego had discovered it.
