Chapter 9 - The Chapel of Broken SaintsThe tunnel ended beneath the old chapel of Santa Inés, where half the saints had cracked faces and the roof leaked whenever it rained.
Dr. Salas shoved open a trapdoor under the altar and climbed out first. I followed, covered in dust, clutching the pendant so tightly its sharp edge cut into my palm.
The chapel was empty except for candles flickering in red glass cups.
For one strange second, I remembered being seven years old, kneeling beside my grandmother in this same chapel while she whispered prayers for people who had never thanked her.
Now her secrets were in my hand.
“Come,” Dr. Salas said.
“Where’s Vargas?”
She did not answer.
“Where’s Ramiro?”
“Aurelio.”
“No.”
Her face softened, but her voice stayed firm. “We keep moving, or their sacrifice means nothing.”
Sacrifice.
The word hit me so hard I stumbled.
She caught my arm.
Outside, the city night had fallen. Sirens screamed in the distance, but in Ciudad de Esperanza sirens did not always mean help. Sometimes they meant the powerful had decided which truth to bury.
Dr. Salas led me through a side door into an alley. A small blue car waited there with its engine running.
A young woman sat behind the wheel.
She had dark curls, sharp eyes, and a scar cutting through one eyebrow.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
Dr. Salas opened the back door. “Drive, Lucía.”
I climbed in.
The car shot forward before my door fully closed.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“My niece,” Dr. Salas said. “And the only journalist in this city too stubborn to stay bought.”
Lucía glanced at me in the mirror.
“So that’s him.”
“Him who?”
“The dead boy.”
I hated that name already.
Dr. Salas turned in her seat. “Aurelio, listen carefully. The microfilm must be copied and sent outside the city before dawn.”
“Why outside?”
“Because inside Ciudad de Esperanza, every institution has a price.”
Lucía snorted. “Some have discounts.”
We sped through narrow streets where laundry hung between balconies and stray dogs scattered from our headlights. Behind us, distant smoke rose over the hills.
Vargas’s mansion.
My throat tightened.
I did not know if he was alive.
I did not know why I cared.
He was a criminal. A feared man. A man whose name emptied streets.
But he had known my grandmother. He had given me shoes. He had stood between me and bullets.
Family, I was learning, did not arrive clean.
Lucía drove us to a print shop with metal shutters covered in graffiti. She parked in the alley and knocked three times, paused, then twice.
A man opened the back door.
He was short, bald, and wearing a shirt that said WORLD’S OKAYEST UNCLE.
“Tell me you didn’t bring trouble,” he said.
Lucía smiled. “I brought history.”
He looked at me and went pale.
“Madre de Dios.”
“Everyone keeps doing that,” I muttered.
Inside, the print shop smelled like ink and hot machines. The man, whose name was Tomás, locked seven locks behind us.
Dr. Salas took the pendant from me and carefully removed the microfilm.
Tomás whistled. “Old school.”
“Can you scan it?” Lucía asked.
“I can scan the pope’s grocery list if you give me ten minutes.”
“Take five.”
He moved fast.
The machines hummed. Images appeared on a computer screen, blurry at first, then sharp.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Routes.
Santa Lucía House.
Judges.
Police chiefs.
Businessmen.
Priests.
And one name repeated over and over.
Rafael Castellanos.
But there was another name too.
One that made Dr. Salas grip the desk.
Valentina Cruz.
Lucía leaned closer. “She’s not just child services.”
“No,” Dr. Salas said. “She signs intake transfers.”
Tomás clicked through more scans.
Then a photograph loaded.
A younger Valentina stood beside my grandmother outside Santa Lucía House.
They were not enemies in the picture.
They were smiling.
I stared at Dr. Salas.
“Why is my grandmother with her?”
Dr. Salas looked stricken.
“I don’t know.”
Lucía zoomed in.
In my grandmother’s hand was a baby blanket.
The same white blanket from the old photograph.
The one my mother held me in.
On the back of the scanned photo, in my grandmother’s handwriting, were four words:
FORGIVE ME, ISABEL. HE LIVED.
My blood went cold.
“What does that mean?” I whispered.
No one answered.
Then someone knocked on the front door of the print shop.
Three slow knocks.
A pause.
Two more.
The same signal Lucía had used.
Tomás reached beneath the counter for a bat.
Lucía pulled a small knife from her boot.
Dr. Salas pushed me behind a printer.
The knocks came again.
Then a voice called through the shutter.
“Aurelio?”
May you like
My heart stopped.
It was Ramiro.
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