Chapter 9 - The Voice Camila Left for MeWe played the recordings in Valeria’s office with the blinds closed and the door locked.

Camila had been careful.

Each memo was titled by date.

Short summaries.

Names.

Amounts.

Which accounts Rodrigo was siphoning through.

Which vineyard parcels he had tried to leverage without authorization.

She even had photos of ledgers and one brief video taken through the half-open study door, showing Rodrigo telling my mother:

“If the boy is born, everything tightens.”

My mother answered:

“Then he cannot be.”

When I heard that, my stomach turned.

But it was the last recording that shattered me.

The file was timestamped at 2:11 a.m. the night Camila went into labor.

Her breathing was uneven.

“Julián, if you ever hear this, I need you to know I tried to keep him safe.”

I put a hand over my mouth.

She continued.

“Rodrigo came to the house tonight. He wanted me to sign an emergency board proxy. I refused. He grabbed my arm. I fell against the desk and—”

She stopped to breathe.

“I think something is wrong. The pains started after that. Your mother called Dr. Salazar before the ambulance arrived. She told him, ‘The child leaves tonight, do you understand me?’”

Valeria wrote the line down immediately.

Camila kept speaking.

“If anything happens, protect our son from them. And if you can’t find him through the family, check the transfer under the false name. Elena knows—”

The audio jolted.

A door opened.

Rodrigo’s voice came from somewhere near the phone.

“What are you doing?”

Camila inhaled sharply.

Then the file ended.

We sat in stunned silence.

There it was: the third clue, confirming what the bracelet and the missing death record had already suggested.

My son had been transferred alive under a false identity.

Elena knew something more.

And Rodrigo was present before labor, not merely afterward.

Valeria was the first to move.

“We need Elena again. Now.”

But before we could call her, my phone rang from an unknown number.

I answered.

A woman’s voice whispered:

“If you want your son alive, stop asking questions.”

I went still.

“Who is this?”

No answer.

Then:

“Querétaro was the first stop. Not the last.”

The line went dead.

Valeria looked at me.

“What did they say?”

I repeated it word for word.

And for the first time, hope and terror struck me in equal measure.

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Because anonymous threats don’t warn you away from graves.

They warn you away from the living.