Chapter 4 - BLOOD AT THE GATE
Gabriel Moretti arrived at the hospital before dawn, furious that no one had contacted him sooner. He was three years younger than Adrian and carried the same dark eyes, though everything else about him seemed built in opposition. Adrian wore restraint like armor; Gabriel wore emotion openly. He entered the room without waiting for permission, crossed the floor in six strides, and gripped the rail of Adrian’s bed so hard his knuckles whitened. For a long moment neither brother spoke. Then Gabriel exhaled, cursed softly, and said, “You nearly died and I had to hear it from a reporter.”
The warmth of the reunion lasted less than a minute. Lucía stepped in and asked Gabriel about the black garlic syrup. He looked genuinely confused. Yes, he had signed for a package at the estate two days earlier, but he claimed it was among several deliveries left at the wrong entrance. He had been visiting the mansion to discuss their mother’s memorial foundation and happened to be near the service door when the courier arrived. He signed because the staff member assigned to deliveries was busy. He never opened the box and did not know what it contained.
Adrian watched his brother carefully. Years earlier, Gabriel had left the family business after a brutal dispute with their father. He returned only after their father’s death, but he and Adrian had never fully repaired the damage. Money stood between them. So did pride. The coastal property made things worse. Gabriel supported selling it and using the proceeds to expand the company; Adrian wanted to preserve the land. If Adrian died without changing the trust documents, Gabriel would inherit voting control over a significant portion of the holding company. It was a motive any investigator would write down.
Gabriel understood that before Lucía said it. “You think I tried to kill my brother because of a bottle I signed for?” he asked. Lucía replied that she thought nothing yet. She followed evidence. Gabriel laughed once, bitterly, then emptied his pockets onto the windowsill: phone, keys, wallet, access card. “Take everything,” he said. “If someone used my name, I want them found.” The anger did not prove innocence, but his willingness to surrender evidence gave Lucía something concrete to test.
The phone placed Gabriel nowhere near the mansion at the time of the attack. Location records showed him at a meeting in Málaga, surrounded by six people and a building full of cameras. The signature on the delivery receipt was real, but the package itself had been left in the service pantry, where dozens of employees could access it. The black garlic syrup was not incriminating by itself. It only proved the sauce had been prepared using an ingredient that entered the property through an ordinary delivery. That, Lucía realized, might have been the point. Whoever designed the attack had built plausible explanations into every step.
At the mansion, forensic teams found a second major clue inside the trash compactor near the service courtyard. Wrapped in two layers of paper towel was the bottom half of a broken white porcelain bowl. It matched the fragment found under the rug. The outer surface had been wiped, but traces remained in the fractured interior. Along with sesame and black garlic, the lab found microscopic particles of blue nitrile glove material. The estate kitchen used white gloves. The gardeners used green. Blue gloves were kept in only one place: the maintenance workshop controlled by Víctor’s office.
When Lucía confronted Víctor with the discovery, he stopped pretending everything could be explained. He asked for a lawyer. Before the lawyer arrived, however, he said one sentence that changed the direction of the investigation. “I didn’t put anything in his food.” Lucía reminded him that she had not accused him of doing so. Víctor looked away. It was a small mistake, the kind made by someone carrying too much information.
Hannah spent the morning with Ellie in a protected guest apartment arranged by the police. The little girl was restless. She wanted her stuffed rabbit, the same one visible in the family photographs Adrian kept saying he would have delivered. More than that, she wanted ordinary life. She wanted cereal in her usual bowl and cartoons before breakfast. She wanted to understand why grown-ups kept speaking in quiet voices whenever she entered a room. Hannah tried to give her normality in pieces: braided hair, warm milk, a game of matching socks. Yet Hannah herself was unraveling under the strain.
Adrian noticed. When he was discharged under police recommendation later that afternoon, he refused to return to the mansion and moved temporarily into a private villa used for business guests. He asked Hannah and Ellie to stay there too, not as employees but as protected witnesses. Hannah hesitated because the arrangement blurred every line that had kept her life predictable. She had worked for Adrian for four years. He was wealthy, guarded, and accustomed to command. She was a housekeeper raising a child alone. Their worlds overlapped only inside the estate. But after watching him kneel to thank Ellie before leaving the hospital, she agreed.
That evening, the villa’s security system recorded a delivery at the outer gate. No courier appeared on camera. A small envelope had been pushed through the bars. Inside was a photograph of Ellie taken at the mansion months earlier while she played beside the fountain. A red circle had been drawn around the child in ink. On the back, a message had been printed in block letters: CHILDREN SHOULD NOT REMEMBER THINGS THAT DO NOT CONCERN THEM.
Hannah went white. Adrian’s reaction was immediate and volcanic. He called Lucía, doubled private security, and ordered every entrance locked. But rage could not erase the truth: the threat meant someone outside police custody knew Ellie had seen the woman in red shoes. That information had been shared only with investigators, Adrian, Hannah, Gabriel, and the child-interview specialist. The circle of danger had just become both smaller and more frightening.
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Lucía studied the photograph under a lamp. It was printed on expensive cotton-fiber paper. In one corner, nearly invisible, was the embossed mark of Moretti Holdings’ executive stationery department. The same paper was used in exactly three places: Adrian’s corporate office, the mansion’s private study, and the family foundation headquarters.
Someone was not only watching Ellie. Someone inside Adrian’s own world was still moving freely.
