Chapter 1 - THE MAN IN THE SHADOWSThe siren wailed as the ambulance tore through the chaotic Monterrey traffic, its red and blue lights casting frantic, flashing geometric patterns across the rain-slicked pavement. Alejandro sat rigidly on the narrow bench beside the stretcher, his fingers locked around Camila’s ice-cold hand.
"Camila, stay with me," he urged, his voice cracking with a raw urgency that terrified even the seasoned paramedic working furiously beside them. "Look at me. Keep your eyes on me."
Her eyelids fluttered, heavy and pale, the dark circles underneath standing out like bruises against her skin. "Alejandro..." she whispered, her voice barely audible over the wailing siren. "The... the SUV. He's... he's still behind us."
Alejandro glanced through the rear window of the ambulance. A matte-black, armored Mercedes G-Wagon clung to their bumper like a shadow, ignoring the emergency lights, refusing to be shaken off. A cold sweat broke out along the back of Alejandro’s neck. For nine months, he had lived with a festering resentment, believing the woman he loved had sold out for luxury and a foreign investor. Now, sitting in the back of a speeding vehicle with her blood soaking his designer suit, his entire reality was fracturing into jagged pieces.
"No one is going to touch you," Alejandro growled, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth ached. He pulled out his phone with his free hand, his thumb flying across the screen to speed-dial Mateo, his ruthless head of security and fixer.
"Boss?" Mateo's voice came through instantly, calm and clinical.
"Drop everything, Mateo. I am in an ambulance heading to a private trauma center—not St. Gabriel’s, divert to the San José Hospital downtown. And listen to me very carefully: there is a matte-black SUV tailing us. License plate ending in 884-TX. Run it, stop it, and bring me the driver alive. If he gets away, don't bother coming back to me."
"Consider it done, Mr. Villarreal," Mateo replied, the line going dead with a sharp click.
Alejandro slid the phone back into his pocket and turned back to Camila. Her breath was coming in shallow, ragged gasps. The paramedic strapped an oxygen mask over her face, shouting numbers and vitals that sounded alarmingly low.
"Her blood pressure is plummeting," the paramedic yelled over the engine. "Internal hemorrhaging or placental abruption. We need to prep an emergency OR the second we touch down!"
May you like
Alejandro gripped the metal railing of the stretcher, feeling an overwhelming surge of fury. His father—the man he had buried with full military honors and tearful eulogies six years ago in a heavily guarded family mausoleum—was supposed to be dead. He had seen the body. He had signed the death certificates. He had watched the mahogany casket lower into the frozen earth.
Yet Camila’s final words before slipping toward unconsciousness echoed like a death knell in his mind: The man you buried wasn't your father. Your father is still alive.
