CHAPTER 5 THE MAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
CHAPTER 5: THE MAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
The intercom voice lingered in the nursery like smoke that refused to clear.
Alejandro didn’t move.
For the first time since entering the room, his composure cracked—not into panic, but into disbelief so deep it looked almost like grief.
Carmen watched him carefully. “Alejandro… who is it?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
The hallway camera feed flickered again.
The man outside the door raised his hand and pressed it against the glass panel, as if he already knew exactly where the sensor was.
“I told you,” the voice repeated softly. “Open the door.”
Mrs. Leticia took a step back, shaking her head. “No… no, that’s not possible. He died in Zurich. That file was closed.”
Alejandro’s jaw tightened.
“Apparently not,” he said under his breath.
Carmen felt a chill crawl up her spine. “You know him.”
Alejandro finally turned his head slightly toward her.
Not fully.
Like it hurt too much to look directly at the memory.
“Yes,” he said.
A pause.
Then:
“My business partner.”
The words didn’t land immediately.
When they did, they changed everything.
The building didn’t feel like a home anymore. It felt like a structure built on something unstable—something old, buried, and now waking up.
The man outside tapped the intercom again.
“You built a fortress, Alejandro,” he said. “But you forgot something important.”
A pause.
A faint smile in his tone.
“You built it with me.”
Carmen’s fingers tightened around the edge of the crib.
Alejandro stepped forward, finally speaking into the intercom.
“You’re dead.”
A quiet laugh came through the speaker.
“Am I?”
The hallway camera zoomed in automatically.
The man leaned closer to the lens.
And Carmen saw his face clearly for the first time.
Not a stranger.
Not a ghost.
A name she had never heard before—but Alejandro had.
And whatever history lived between them wasn’t just business.
It was betrayal that had started long before Valeria ever entered the house.
Inside the nursery, alarms suddenly blinked red.
Not a warning.
A breach.
From within the building’s internal systems.
Alejandro turned sharply toward the control panel.
“Someone is inside my network,” he said.
Mrs. Leticia whispered, “That’s not me—I swear, I didn’t—”
“I know,” Alejandro cut her off.
But his eyes had already shifted again.
Because Carmen noticed it too.
The baby monitor.
It was no longer showing the hallway.
It had switched views.
To the vault level.
Deep beneath the penthouse.
A place Carmen had never even known existed.
And the system had just unlocked it.
Alejandro’s voice dropped into something colder than fear.
“That wasn’t a breach,” he said slowly.
“That was an invitation.”
The monitor flickered one last time.
And the man’s voice returned, closer than before, almost amused:
“Let’s see how long it takes you to remember what you buried under this building.”
The screen went black.
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And somewhere far below the nursery…
An elevator started moving upward.
