Chapter 4 - The Sanctuary of Wolves
At noon, I was discharged. I didn't leave through the front lobby where local reporters were already beginning to gather after rumors of an assault at the Lobo estate leaked to the press. Instead, Victoria's guards escorted me down a service elevator directly into an underground parking bay.
Waiting for us was not the Lamborghini she had driven through the Lobo gates, but a convoy of three armored, matte-black Mercedes Maybachs with reinforced windows thick enough to stop a high-caliber rifle round.
As the heavy door closed with the thud of a bank vault, the car swept up into the daylight. We drove for forty minutes, leaving the manicured suburbs where the Lobos lived and ascending into the misty, forested ridges that overlooked the entire valley.
We passed through three separate iron security gates, each manned by uniformed private guards bearing the crest of a silver falcon—the Montoya seal I hadn't seen since I was seven years old. When the car finally pulled up the gravel driveway of the estate, my breath caught in my throat.
It was not a modern, ostentatious glass box like Beatrice Lobo’s gaudy mansion. It was a sprawling, classical stone fortress constructed of dark granite and Spanish tile, surrounded by towering cypress trees and an army of guards who snapped to attention the moment Victoria stepped onto the gravel.
Elena was standing at the top of the terrace steps.
My aunt, who had raised me in a modest suburban cottage and told me my mother was dead to the world, wore an apron stained with flour, but her eyes were red-rimmed and fierce.
"Lucia," Elena cried, rushing down the marble steps and throwing her arms around me. She bypassed Victoria entirely, pulling me against her chest with the familiar, comforting scent of lavender soap. "Look at you. Look what those animals did to my girl."
"I told you she wasn't safe in that world, Elena," Victoria said coldly from behind us.
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Elena pulled back, glaring at Victoria with a venom only a sister could muster. "She was safe until your shadow fell on her life again! She lived sixteen quiet years until your enemies forced her to hide her name, which made her think she was nothing! If she knew she was a Montoya, she never would have looked twice at a pathetic coward like Matteo Lobo!"
Victoria didn't flinch. "She knows now. And no one will ever look down on her again."
