A weak knock came from behind the reinforced gray door just after Alejandro stopped Victoria and a Vega associate from preventing him from reaching it.

Mercer’s relief disappeared when I asked him one question.

“Where is Rafael?”

“I don’t know.”

Salvatore stood behind him.

Mercer looked toward the door as though Victoria might somehow save him.

“You’re more afraid of my uncle than you are of me,” I said.

“That should tell you something.”

“It tells me you chose the wrong side.”

Mercer looked down.

“There wasn’t a right side once Rafael came back.”

I pulled out a chair and sat opposite him.

That bothered him more than shouting would have.

“He never left the organization,” Mercer said. “He left your sight.”

Rafael had spent four years cultivating retired captains, widows of old soldiers, cousins who felt pushed aside, and men too minor to attract attention but close enough to hear everything.

He had built influence from resentment.

Then Isabel found the markers.

“Why were they in my house?”

“Your father made them.”

That surprised me.

Mercer continued carefully.

“Not as betrayal. As warning.”

Before my father died, he tracked every family branch still emotionally loyal to Rafael. He hid those names in the antique-map cabinet because he expected me to find them only if Rafael resurfaced.

Isabel found them first.

Victoria discovered her.

“And Victoria?”

Mercer laughed bitterly. “Rafael promised her she would become Mrs. Vega.”

I stared at him.

“He told her Isabel was the only thing between her and the life she deserved. Killing Isabel immediately was too dangerous because nobody knew if she had copied the markers.”

“So Victoria kept her alive.”

“Yes.”

Nine months.

A woman hiding another woman under the same roof while slowly entering her marriage.

Mercer looked at me.

“She thought if Isabel eventually broke, Rafael would reward her.”

“Did he?”

Mercer’s mouth twisted.

“He started preparing someone else.”

I leaned forward.

“Who?”

“A second woman.”