Chapter 6 - Night of Glass and Gunmetal
The sound from the kitchen was followed by the scrape of a shoe on broken glass. Alejandro
killed the lamp beside the dining table. Darkness dropped over the lodge except for the dull
orange glow from the fireplace. He pulled Elena behind the stone wall dividing the dining room
from the hall. Victoria moved with them, no longer elegant, no longer composed, her white dress
marked by soot and dirt. For the first time all night she looked exactly like what she was: a
frightened woman trapped inside the consequences of choices she could no longer control.
Another crash came from the kitchen. Then a man stepped into the hall. Alejandro could see only
his outline at first—broad shoulders, dark clothes, something metallic in his hand. The
stranger raised it. Alejandro shoved Elena down as a shot cracked through the lodge and buried
itself in the wooden beam above them. Splinters rained across the floor.
Victoria screamed. Alejandro grabbed the nearest chair and hurled it toward the hallway. The
man flinched, giving Alejandro enough time to drag Elena through the side door into the study.
Victoria followed and slammed the door. There was no key. “The window,” Alejandro said. The
study window opened onto a steep slope behind the lodge. Elena tried to lift it, but the old
frame had swollen in the damp and refused to move. Alejandro joined her, forcing it upward inch
by inch.
Behind them the door shuddered under a heavy blow. Victoria looked around wildly and spotted a
bookcase narrow enough to move. She threw her weight against it. “Help me.” Alejandro hesitated
only a second before joining her. Together they dragged the case across the floor and braced it
against the door. Another blow struck from the other side, making the shelves jump.
The window finally opened. Cold mountain air poured into the room. “Elena, go.” She climbed
through, wincing as she lowered herself onto the wet ground. Alejandro turned to Victoria. “You
next.” She shook her head. “You.” “Victoria—” “If he breaks through while you’re outside, Elena
can’t run fast enough. Go.”
There was no time to argue. Alejandro climbed through the window and reached back. Victoria
swung one leg over the sill just as the study door burst inward. The bookcase tipped. A hand
seized the back of her dress. Victoria cried out. Alejandro caught both her wrists and pulled.
For one terrible second she was suspended between them—the attacker dragging her backward,
Alejandro hauling her toward the night. Fabric tore. Victoria fell through the window and
landed on top of him.
A shot shattered the frame above their heads. They rolled down the wet slope together. Elena
was waiting behind a low stone wall near the edge of the trees. “This way.” The three of them
ran into the pines. The forest swallowed the lodge almost immediately. Branches clawed at their
clothes, and the earth beneath them was slick with fallen needles. Elena stumbled twice.
Alejandro caught her the second time and put her arm around his shoulders. Behind them,
flashlights appeared between the trees.
“They’re following,” Victoria said. Alejandro looked toward the dark ridgeline. His father had
once brought him here to teach him the trails, long before business replaced everything else.
He remembered a narrow path leading to an abandoned ranger station half a kilometer north. More
importantly, the station sat beside an old public road.
They moved uphill. Elena’s breathing became ragged, but she refused to stop. “The drive,” she
said. “I have it,” Alejandro told her. “No. I mean if they catch us, give it to someone outside
the company. Police. Prosecutor. Press. Anyone.” “We’re all getting out.” She looked at him in
the darkness. “You don’t know that.”
“I do now.” It was irrational, but the words mattered. Alejandro had spent the entire evening
discovering how little he controlled. Yet there was still one thing he could choose: he would
not surrender the people beside him to someone else’s plan. A light swept across the trees
behind them.
Victoria grabbed his arm. “Wait.” She pointed downhill. One of the pursuers had separated from
the others and was moving toward their right flank. Alejandro recognized the voice that
followed. “Mr. Valdés! Stop running. Mateo wants to talk.” It was Sergio Núñez, deputy head of
estate security.
Alejandro nearly laughed. Sergio had inspected every alarm in his home. He had briefed
Alejandro on threats, approved bodyguards, and once lectured him for leaving a restaurant
through an unsecured exit. Now he was hunting him through the dark. “That’s how deep it goes,”
Victoria whispered.
“No,” Alejandro said. “That’s how deep it went.” The distinction surprised even him. They
reached the ranger station several minutes later. It was little more than a concrete room with
a rusted roof and a faded emergency sign. But on the wall outside hung something Alejandro had
forgotten existed: an old landline box maintained for wildfire crews.
He lifted the receiver. A dial tone. For the first time that night, something worked. Alejandro
called emergency services and gave his full name, location, and a statement simple enough that
no dispatcher could misunderstand it. “There are armed men pursuing us. There has been a fire
at my residence. I have evidence of financial crimes and a plan to kill me. Send Guardia Civil
and medical assistance. Do not contact my private security.”
The dispatcher kept him on the line. Outside, Elena and Victoria watched the trees. A
flashlight appeared on the trail. Then another. Then three more. Alejandro could hear sirens
far in the distance, but the mountains bent sound strangely. They might have been minutes away
or much farther.
Sergio’s voice came from the darkness. “Alejandro, this can still end quietly.” Alejandro
stepped outside the station but remained behind the concrete wall. “You tried quiet,” he called
back. “Quiet is what brought us here.” A pause. Then Mateo’s voice answered from somewhere
beyond the trees.
“You are making this emotional.” Alejandro felt something almost like sadness. “No,” he said.
“You did that when you made me family.” Silence followed. Then, from the road below, blue
lights swept between the trunks. The flashlights in the forest shifted. Someone shouted. The
pursuers began moving away.
Victoria sagged against the station wall. Elena covered her face with both hands, and the
breath she released sounded half like a sob, half like a laugh. Alejandro did not move until
uniformed officers reached them. Two men were arrested near the lower road. Sergio escaped into
the forest. Mateo vanished before the patrols secured the area.
By dawn, Elena was in a private hospital under police guard. Victoria was being questioned in
another room. Alejandro sat alone beneath fluorescent lights with soot on his face, dried blood
on his cuff, and the metal drive sealed inside an evidence bag on the table before a
prosecutor.
He should have felt safe. Instead, one sentence from the prosecutor chilled him more than the
mountain night. “We can protect you from Mateo Rivas,” she said. “But first we need to know how
May you like
many people he owns.” Alejandro looked through the hospital window as morning broke over
Madrid. For the first time, he understood that escaping the house had only been the beginning.
