PART 7 – THE WOMAN WHO NEVER EXISTED
PART 7 – THE WOMAN WHO NEVER EXISTED
Fear settled over the Santillán estate like a storm that refused to leave.
After the anonymous photograph arrived, Rodrigo transformed the mansion into a fortress.
Additional security cameras covered every entrance.
Armed guards patrolled the grounds twenty-four hours a day.
Every visitor was searched.
Every vehicle was inspected.
Every employee underwent another background investigation.
Yet none of it made Mariana feel safer.
The threat wasn't coming from outside anymore.
It felt as though it had already found its way inside.
Three nights later, Santiago woke up screaming.
Rodrigo and Mariana rushed into his room.
The little boy pointed toward the window with trembling hands.
"She's here..."
Rodrigo pulled back the curtains.
The garden was empty.
Only moonlight illuminated the roses.
Mariana held Santiago close.
"What did you see?"
"The lady."
"The one from before?"
Santiago nodded.
"She wasn't smiling this time."
"What did she say?"
The child buried his face against Mariana's shoulder.
"She said Daddy is running out of time."
Rodrigo said nothing.
But something deep inside him tightened.
The next morning, Detective Alejandro Ruiz arrived carrying a thick stack of documents.
"I found something."
Everyone gathered around the dining table.
Ruiz spread dozens of photographs across the polished wood.
"These are images from traffic cameras over the last six months."
Every photograph showed the same black SUV.
Different locations.
Different dates.
Always parked nearby.
Outside Santiago's school.
Near the hospital.
Across the street from Rodrigo's headquarters.
Even outside Nicolás's university.
"They've been watching all of you," Ruiz said quietly.
"For months."
Mariana's face turned pale.
Rodrigo stared at the photographs.
"They're always one step ahead."
Ruiz nodded.
"Because someone keeps telling them where you'll be."
Silence filled the room.
The traitor still hadn't been found.
Meanwhile, Nicolás continued studying the journals recovered from the abandoned Helix laboratory.
One notebook stood apart from the others.
Unlike the scientific reports, it was handwritten.
Personal.
Its author never signed a name.
Only the initials:
E.S.
The first pages described the excitement of creating medicines from rare mountain plants.
The later pages grew darker.
The researchers stopped talking about healing.
They talked about control.
About military funding.
About invisible weapons.
One sentence was circled several times.
"The greatest poison is the one doctors cannot recognize."
Nicolás closed the notebook.
He remembered Santiago gasping for breath.
The fever.
The sleepless nights.
Someone had tested that theory.
On a child.
Rodrigo wasn't willing to wait any longer.
He contacted one of his father's oldest friends.
Don Esteban Navarro.
The elderly businessman had retired years earlier and rarely spoke about the past.
When Rodrigo showed him the Helix photograph, Don Esteban turned pale.
"I prayed I'd never see this again."
"You knew about Helix?"
"I helped finance it."
Rodrigo stared at him in disbelief.
"You what?"
"It wasn't supposed to become what it became."
"What was it supposed to be?"
"A research center."
"For medicines."
"For children with rare lung diseases."
Rodrigo felt a flicker of hope.
"So my father wasn't involved in something evil."
Don Esteban shook his head slowly.
"No."
"At least..."
"Not in the beginning."
The old man poured himself a glass of water.
His hands trembled.
"Everything changed after a woman joined the project."
"What woman?"
"No one knew where she came from."
"She wasn't introduced through the board."
"She simply appeared."
"And somehow..."
"Within months..."
"She controlled everything."
Rodrigo leaned forward.
"What was her name?"
Don Esteban whispered,
"Dr. Elena Salvatierra."
Ruiz immediately searched the national medical registry.
Nothing.
No license.
No university.
No passport.
No birth certificate.
The woman...
Had never officially existed.
That evening, Ruiz received a call from the forensic laboratory.
The fingerprint found on the anonymous photograph had finally produced a partial match.
Not enough for an identity.
But enough for a family connection.
The unknown print belonged to someone biologically related to...
Verónica Salazar.
Ruiz frowned.
Verónica had always claimed she was an only child.
Someone had lied.
At the mansion, Doña Mercedes found Nicolás sitting alone in the library.
"You haven't slept."
"I'm fine."
She smiled gently.
"No."
"You're carrying the same look Rodrigo had when he was twenty."
Nicolás laughed softly.
"I don't know whether that's good or bad."
"It means you're trying to protect everyone."
She placed an old wooden box on the table.
"This belonged to Raúl."
Rodrigo's father.
"I think it's time someone opened it."
Inside were letters tied together with faded blue ribbon.
Most were ordinary.
Business correspondence.
Family photographs.
Then Nicolás found one sealed envelope.
Across the front, in careful handwriting, were six words.
Open only if Helix returns.
Rodrigo broke the seal with shaking hands.
Inside was a single letter.
"My son,
If you are reading this, then I have failed.
Helix was never destroyed.
We only buried it.
There are people who believe science should answer to money instead of conscience.
If they ever come back...
Do not trust anyone connected to the old project.
Not even my friends.
Especially not those who claim they are trying to help you.
There is only one place where the truth survived.
Find the Observatory."
No signature.
Only his father's initials.
R.S.
"The Observatory?" Mariana asked.
Rodrigo looked confused.
"My father never mentioned anything like that."
Don Esteban had no answer.
Neither did Ruiz.
But Nicolás remembered something.
"When I was cleaning the Helix laboratory..."
"I saw an old map."
"There was a building marked with a symbol."
"What kind of symbol?"
He drew it on a sheet of paper.
A circle...
Surrounded by eight small stars.
Don Esteban gasped.
"I've seen that before."
"Where?"
"In Oaxaca."
"There was an abandoned mountain observatory built decades ago."
"It belonged to Helix."
Without wasting another minute, Rodrigo decided they would leave at dawn.
Only four people would go.
Rodrigo.
Ruiz.
Nicolás.
And Don Esteban.
Mariana wanted to come.
Rodrigo refused.
"If this is a trap..."
"Then one parent must stay with Santiago."
She understood.
But something about the goodbye unsettled her.
As Rodrigo kissed Santiago goodnight, the little boy looked unusually serious.
"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"If you go to the mountain..."
Rodrigo smiled.
"Who told you we're going to a mountain?"
Santiago frowned.
"The lady."
Rodrigo's smile disappeared.
"What else did she say?"
The child answered so quietly that everyone had to lean closer.
"She said..."
"...Grandpa is waiting there."
Silence.
Raúl Santillán had been dead for fifteen years.
Or so everyone believed.
At exactly 5:30 the next morning, two black SUVs left the Santillán estate and headed south toward the mountains of Oaxaca.
None of them noticed the small tracking device hidden beneath the rear bumper.
Miles away, inside an abandoned warehouse, a computer screen lit up.
A blinking red dot began moving across the map.
The elegant silver-haired woman watched it with satisfaction.
"They took the bait."
A younger man standing beside her asked,
"Should we stop them now?"
She smiled.
"No."
"Let them find the Observatory."
"After all..."
"They're carrying the last missing piece straight to us."
She closed the laptop.
May you like
For the first time, she spoke the name everyone else feared.
"Project Aurora begins again."
