Chapter 3 - Every Nanny Was Given the Same Dangerous Instructions

Alejandro moved in front of Mateo before I could.

The change in him was immediate. Grief disappeared behind training. His body lowered slightly, one hand reaching inside his jacket while the other pushed Mateo and me behind the piano.

“Stay here.”

The hidden passage beyond the red door was barely wide enough for one adult. No lights. No windows. Only the smell of old wood and cold stone.

Another floorboard creaked.

Alejandro stepped into the darkness.

“Show yourself.”

Nothing answered.

I could hear Mateo breathing beside me, fast and shallow.

“Can I touch your shoulder?” I whispered.

He nodded.

I rested two fingers against the fabric of his shirt. Not holding. Just there.

A crash sounded inside the passage.

Alejandro vanished around a corner.

Socorro gasped.

Then footsteps pounded somewhere behind the wall.

I looked toward the locked music-room door.

The handle suddenly turned.

A guard burst in from the hallway, gun raised.

“Señor!”

“Put that away,” I snapped.

He stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

Mateo covered his ears.

“Put it away!”

The guard lowered the weapon.

Two more men rushed past him toward the hidden passage. Seconds later Alejandro reappeared, breathing hard, empty-handed.

“Whoever it was knew the route.”

“Did you see them?”

“Black clothes. Hood. About my height.”

He looked at the guard.

“How was this door locked?”

The man swallowed. “We don’t know. Camera feed cut for ninety-two seconds. When it came back, the outer lock showed engaged.”

“Who has access?”

“Security command.”

Alejandro’s face went still.

That answer implicated too many people and one person in particular.

Rafael.

Mateo tugged my sleeve.

He was pointing at the floor near the hidden door.

A black glove lay partly beneath Camila’s chair.

I crouched but did not touch it.

“Was that here before?”

Socorro shook her head.

Alejandro called for an evidence bag.

When one of the guards bent to collect the glove, I caught a smell as it lifted.

Sharp. Medicinal. Mint and something bitter.

Mateo gagged.

His reaction was so violent that he stumbled backward.

I knelt at once.

“You know that smell?”

He slapped both hands over his nose.

The guard froze.

“What is it?” Alejandro demanded.

“Maybe antiseptic,” the man said.

Socorro leaned closer without touching. “Camphor.”

A memory clicked.

The eighteenth nanny, the one who had fled the mansion with blood on her forehead, had passed me at the gate before I officially started. Her expensive white uniform had smelled strongly of the same medicinal scent.

“Do the nannies use something with camphor?” I asked.

Socorro frowned. “Their hand cream. It comes with the household medical kit.”

“Who gives them the kit?”

“The family clinic sends it.”

Alejandro looked at Mateo.

The boy’s face had lost all color.

We left the music room immediately.

For the rest of the morning Mateo refused to let anyone carrying the scent near him.

It turned out almost every nanny had used the cream.

That detail had never appeared in any report because no one had thought it important.

By afternoon Alejandro had summoned boxes of files from his private office.

He spread them across a long dining table while Mateo sat at the far end drawing with crayons. I was supposed to be dusting the shelves, but both Alejandro and I knew I had been invited to listen.

There were eighteen personnel folders.

Each nanny had completed training before entering Mateo’s wing.

Each had signed the same behavioral protocol.

Alejandro read from the first.

“Approach the child directly. Establish eye contact. Use firm physical guidance if he refuses transitions. Do not reward avoidance behaviors by retreating.”

I felt sick.

“That’s exactly what frightens him.”

“It came from his treatment team.”

“Which treatment team?”

He checked.

“Dr. Elena Salas.”

“Call her.”

Alejandro looked at me.

“You issue orders easily for a maid.”

“You asked why eighteen professionals failed. This might be why.”

He made the call.

Dr. Elena Salas arrived less than an hour later.

She was in her fifties, small, silver-haired, and furious before she finished reading the first page.

“I did not write this.”

Alejandro’s voice turned dangerous. “Your name is on it.”

“So is a signature that resembles mine.”

She pulled reading glasses from her purse.

“My actual recommendations were the opposite. No forced eye contact. No restraint unless there is immediate danger. Give Mateo control over proximity. Reduce sensory triggers. Never corner him.”

I sat slowly.

Someone had taken professional advice and reversed it.

Not carelessness.

Design.

“How long ago did you submit your original plan?” I asked.

“Twenty-two months.”

“Who received it?”

Dr. Salas looked at Alejandro.

“Your family medical office.”

“Name.”

“I sent it to Dr. Iván Molina.”

Alejandro swore.

Mateo’s crayon snapped.

Everyone fell silent.

Dr. Salas immediately softened her voice.

“I’m sorry, cariño.”

Mateo stared at her.

Unlike the nannies, she did not approach.

She sat on the floor where she was, several yards away.

“I won’t come closer.”

He studied her for almost a minute.

Then returned to his drawing.

I liked her.

Alejandro did not look reassured.

“Iván treated Camila’s family for years.”

“That does not make the document authentic,” Elena said.

“Could the protocol explain Mateo attacking every nanny?”

“It could explain part of it. Imagine grieving, terrified, unable or unwilling to speak, and each new adult is trained to override your body. Then add a smell associated with something frightening.”

She looked toward the evidence bag containing the glove.

“You believe camphor is a trigger?”

“We don’t know.”

“Then do not test it on him.”

That single sentence separated her from almost everyone else who had entered the mansion.

Do not force the child to prove what hurts him.

Alejandro seemed to hear the difference too.

“What should we do?”

“Stop treating silence as defiance. Stop demanding performance. Give him choices. And find out why someone wanted his caregivers to do the exact opposite.”

After she left, Alejandro ordered Dr. Molina located.

He was not at his clinic.

He was not at home.

His phone was off.

At four that afternoon, security reported that Molina had crossed into Texas before sunrise.

Before the glove was found.

Before the altered protocols were discovered.

Before anyone had publicly accused him of anything.

“He knew,” Alejandro said.

We were in his office. No guards. No Socorro. Mateo slept on a sofa under a blanket after exhausting himself drawing.

“How?”

“Someone warned him.”

“Or he was already planning to leave.”

Alejandro gave me an impatient look.

“You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Leave room for the explanation you dislike.”

“That’s how you avoid punishing the wrong person.”

His face tightened.

The words had landed somewhere painful.

I remembered what he had said downstairs: the world that killed his mother.

A world Alejandro had apparently answered with violence.

I did not ask who he had punished after Camila died.

Not yet.

Mateo shifted in his sleep.

A folded paper slid from beneath his hand.

I picked it up.

Another drawing.

This one showed a bed.

A small figure lay on it.

Beside the bed stood a tall figure with a black circle on one hand.

Rafael’s ring.

But there was another detail.

A second adult stood near the door holding something white.

I looked closer.

A bottle.

On it Mateo had drawn a green cross.

Medicine.

“Alejandro.”

He came beside me.

His face changed.

“The second man?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have cameras in Mateo’s room?”

“Not inside. Camila refused them. Hallway only.”

“Records from two years ago?”

“Archived.”

He called security and requested every overnight hallway recording from the six months after the ambush.

The answer came ten minutes later.

The files were gone.

Not corrupted.

Deleted.

Authorization code: RC-01.

Rafael Cárdenas.

Alejandro rose so fast his chair struck the wall.

“Where is he?”

His security commander answered through the speaker.

“Señor Cárdenas left the estate after breakfast. His phone is not responding.”

“Find him.”

I looked at Mateo.

Still asleep.

His fist had closed around a red crayon.

“Alejandro.”

He ignored me.

“Lock the gates. Nobody leaves. Nobody enters without my approval.”

“Alejandro.”

“What?”

“Do not bring Rafael here angry and interrogate him in front of your son.”

His eyes flashed.

“If he entered Mateo’s room—”

“We don’t know that.”

“He deleted the recordings.”

“We know his code was used.”

“My codes are biometric.”

“Then investigate that.”

He stared at me.

I held up the drawing.

“If Mateo has spent two years terrified because adults decide what happened before listening to him, don’t repeat it now.”

For several seconds I thought he would explode.

Then he walked to the window.

The mountains beyond San Pedro were turning violet under the evening sky.

“When Camila died,” he said, “a rival group claimed responsibility within hours.”

I waited.

“I believed them.”

“Were they lying?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

His voice had gone flat.

“I retaliated.”

The word carried more weight than he explained.

I did not need details.

“How many?”

He looked at me.

“Enough.”

That was the first time I understood the true size of his fear.

If Rafael had lied about Camila’s death, Alejandro had built two years of blood on someone else’s design.

Mateo woke at dusk.

He sat up suddenly, eyes wide.

I moved where he could see me.

“You’re okay.”

He looked toward the office door.

Then at his father.

Alejandro knelt several feet away.

“No one is coming in.”

Mateo pointed to the paper in my hand.

I gave it back.

He took the black crayon and darkened the circle on the standing figure’s hand.

Then he pointed to his own throat.

His fingers closed around it.

Alejandro stopped breathing.

“Did someone hurt your throat?”

Mateo shook his head.

He pointed to his throat again.

Then placed one finger over his lips.

Quiet.

He pointed at the black-ring figure.

Then at Alejandro.

Then dragged the red crayon across the page.

A line from the ringed man to his father.

I felt cold.

“Is he saying someone told him to stay quiet or his father would be hurt?”

Alejandro’s face drained.

Mateo began shaking.

“Stop,” I said.

Alejandro’s eyes did not leave his son.

“Mateo, was it Rafael?”

“Stop.”

“I need to know.”

Mateo threw the crayon.

It struck the wall.

He screamed and crawled backward against the sofa.

I stepped between them.

“No more questions.”

Alejandro’s face twisted with helpless fury.

“He knows.”

“He is four.”

“He can tell us.”

“He has been telling you for two years.”

That silenced him.

Mateo buried his face in the blanket.

I stayed nearby until his breathing slowed.

Later, after he fell asleep again, I found Alejandro alone in the hallway.

He held Camila’s note in one hand.

“I hired experts,” he said.

“I know.”

“I gave them anything they asked for.”

“I know.”

“I thought his silence was damage from seeing her die.”

“It is damage.”

He looked toward the closed door.

“But not only from that.”

“No.”

A security phone rang.

Alejandro answered.

His expression hardened as he listened.

Then he looked at me.

“They found Rafael’s car.”

“Where?”

“Abandoned near the highway.”

“Was he inside?”

“No.”

“What did they find?”

He ended the call.

“A second phone.”

My stomach tightened.

“Whose number was on it?”

“Only one contact.”

“Dr. Molina?”

Alejandro shook his head.

The answer was worse.

“The number belongs to this mansion.”

I frowned.

“Which extension?”

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He looked down the hallway toward the bedrooms.

“Mateo’s room.”