Chapter 15 - The breach at the gates
Alejandro bounded to the library window, throwing aside the heavy velvet drapery. Down below, bathed in the glaring red strobes of the estate alarm system, the massive front iron gates hung wide open, their hydraulic hinges sheared clean through by the reinforced steel bumper of a heavy armored transport.
"Mateo!" Alejandro shouted into his radio transmitter, his thumb pressing the talk switch with white-hot urgency. "Mateo, report! What happened to the perimeter?"
Static hissed through the speaker, followed by the sound of labored breathing and frantic scuffling.
"Señor Alejandro..." Mateo’s voice came through, strained and ragged. "They didn't come to break in... they came to drop something off. They took down the gate sensors with an EMP burst. There’s a vehicle idling on the lower circle!"
"Stay with Mother," Alejandro told Lucía, reaching into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulling out a licensed compact firearm. "Lock this door from the inside and do not open it for anyone except me."
"Alejandro, wait!" Lucía cried, grabbing his forearm. Her eyes were wide, but she didn't tremble. Months of surviving Camila’s cruelty had hardened her instincts. "Look at the monitor."
Mounted on the wall beside the fireplace was the closed-circuit security display. The primary feed showed the cobblestone fountain in front of the main doors. A lone figure had stepped out of the black transport vehicle, leaving the headlights blazing into the house.
The figure was an older man, tall and strikingly upright, dressed in an immaculate charcoal-grey wool overcoat. Even through the grainy black-and-white camera feed, his resemblance to the portrait of Don Roberto Morales was chilling enough to stop the heart.
He walked to the stone steps, stopped directly in front of the security camera, and lifted his left hand.
On his ring finger, catching the glare of the halogen floodlights, sat an obsidian stone flanked by two platinum wolves.
He did not draw a weapon. Instead, he unbuttoned his overcoat, pulled a legal document bound in blue state ribbon from his inner pocket, and laid it neatly across the top step of the hacienda. Then, looking directly into the camera lens with a calm, predatory smile, he raised two fingers to his temple in a mocking salute, stepped back into the vehicle, and vanished into the darkness as the black transport roared back through the shattered gates.
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Silence fell over the library, thick and suffocating.
"He didn't come to kill us," Lucía whispered, her mind racing with cold clarity. "He came to serve an eviction."
