Chapter 7 - The Archive of Sins
Late that night, unable to sleep as the baby kicked rhythmically against the dull ache of my bruised ribs, I wandered down the long, vaulted stone corridors of the estate.
The lower level smelled of old paper, leather, and cedar. I followed a sliver of amber light into a cavernous private archive lined with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves. Sitting at a large drafting table was Elena, wearing reading glasses, sorting through stacks of manila envelopes bearing red wax seals.
"You should be resting, little bird," Elena said without looking up, her voice softening as she recognized my footsteps.
"I need to know the truth, Aunt Elena," I said, pulling a chair beside her. "You told me my mother left because she didn't care about being a mother. You told me she was obsessed with power."
Elena sighed heavily, setting down a pair of reading glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose. She slid a thick, yellowed dossier across the table toward me.
"Open it," she whispered.
I untied the faded ribbon and opened the cover. Inside were dozens of crime-scene photographs from twenty years ago. In one photo, a nursery had been shredded by automatic gunfire, the crib riddled with bullet holes, the pink wallpaper soaked in blood.
"That was your bedroom in Madrid," Elena said, her voice shaking with old horrors. "Your father was ambushed an hour before that photo was taken. Victoria arrived at the house twenty minutes ahead of the hit squad. She killed three men in the foyer while holding you against her chest with one arm. When she handed you to me in the escape vehicle, she had two bullet wounds in her shoulder and an open fracture in her collarbone."
I stared at the black-and-white images, my stomach turning to ice.
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"Victoria didn't leave because she didn't love you," Elena said quietly. "She left because she knew that as long as she was near you, every syndicate from Bogota to Milan would use you as leverage. She spent seventeen years methodically exterminating thirty-two rival families so that one day, you could walk the earth without a shadow over your head."
Elena reached over, covering my trembling hand with hers. "She stayed away to give you an ordinary life. She didn't expect that the danger wouldn't come from international assassins, but from a family of suburban hyenas you met at a university library."
