Chapter 3 THE CHILD THEY BURIED

Catalina needed air.

Not freedom – just space, something soft and wide that didn't smell like Lucien's cologne or bourbon or the iron weight of his body pressing into hers night after night, filling her, claiming her, gripping her soul with fingers she didn't know how to loosen.

Her limbs still ached from the things he'd done the night before, not violently – no, he didn't bruise unless he meant to – but thoroughly, like he was trying to carve his name into her bones.

So she asked for a walk. It wasn't unusual.

Lucien liked women with lungs. It meant they wouldn't pass out too quickly when he kissed them too long.

The guards didn't ask questions. One of them followed three steps behind, another two ahead, as she wandered off the paved courtyard path and into the outer lawn, where the grass didn't grow as even and the roses looked like they bit back.

She wore white-light linen pants, sleeveless blouse, unbrushed curls falling like smoke around her collarbone.

A cigarette dangled between her fingers, though she never smoked it, only let it burn slowly so her hands had something to do while her mind worked through the maze of Lucien's strange inconsistencies – how he never asked questions, how he always knew when she lied, how he whispered things in his sleep like he was bleeding beneath the surface. She turned the corner of the garden wall and stopped.

There, just beyond the stone arch where the official grounds ended and the forgotten olive trees began, sat a boy.

He couldn't have been more than five, maybe six, crouched in the dirt with bare feet and two butterflies perched on his wrist like he'd been born in silence and grown up without scaring anything away.

His hair was thick and black, tangled with leaves, and he wore a threadbare white shirt two sizes too big, the sleeves rolled up like someone had tried to civilize him once but gave up halfway through.

He didn't look up when she approached. Didn't run.

Just kept watching the butterflies crawl over his knuckles like they belonged to him. Catalina tilted her head. The guards didn't react.

They stood a distance away, deliberately looking elsewhere – like this part of the land didn't exist, like the boy wasn't theirs to acknowledge.

And that's when she knew Lucien had no idea. If he had, the boy wouldn't be here. He would be locked up, protected, hidden, weaponized. Lucien didn't leave loose ends lying in the sun.

And this child – he was nothing but a loose thread, quiet and strange and abandoned just far enough away from the main house to feel erased. She knelt beside him without thinking.

"Hi," she said softly, voice almost breaking on the word.

"What's your name?" He didn't answer.

His eyes were wide and solemn, not afraid, just unreadable. Like he'd heard language once and decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

She reached slowly into her pocket and pulled out a wrapped caramel, holding it in her open palm. Still nothing.

But he took it, turned it once in his fingers, and tucked it into his shirt pocket like it was gold. The next day, she came back.

He was there again, this time sitting cross-legged with a stick and a line of rocks laid out in precise, deliberate order.

She sat beside him, offered no words. Just watched. On the third visit, she brought paper and colored pencils and drew a butterfly.

He drew one too – messy and awkward, but the shape was there. By the fifth day, she had learned two things.

One: the boy didn't speak, but he listened. Carefully. Two: his name was Gabriel. He had written it, shaky and slow, on the bottom corner of her drawing.

Catalina stared at the name for a long time, something cold unfurling in her chest. Gabriel. It wasn't a common name in the Torres family line.

Lucien had never mentioned it. Not once. Not even in his sleep. She thought about asking Isa to run a background check. But something told her not to-not yet.

Not until she was sure this wasn't some orphan dumped on the estate by a distant cousin, not until she could feel in her gut what she was starting to suspect. Gabriel looked too much like someone.

Someone she now slept beside every night.

---

The sun was high when it happened. She was helping him fix the strap on his sandal, kneeling in the dirt, her fingers tugging the leather into a knot, when her vision blurred.

She blinked once. Twice. Her knees buckled. Her hands trembled.

The heat smothered her skin like a blanket soaked in gasoline. She tried to call for the guard but her mouth wouldn't move.

Her body folded like paper. The last thing she saw was Gabriel's face, still and silent, butterflies scattering in the grass behind him. Then nothing.

When she woke, the light was low and warm and filtered through gauze curtains that fluttered like ghost wings.

The bed beneath her was too soft. The ceiling is too quiet.

She wasn't in a hospital. She was still inside the estate.

A woman sat beside her – round face, dark braids pinned tightly, hands folded in her lap. She wore the pale blue uniform of a midwife, not a nurse. Catalina sat up fast.

The woman caught her gently. "Careful, señorita. You fainted. From heat, most likely."

Catalina's mind raced. She scanned the room. No machines. No beeping monitors.

Just cotton sheets, water on the bedside table, and a fan humming somewhere overhead.

Someone had moved her. Cleaned her. But not reported her.

That meant Lucien didn't know. Or if he did, he hadn't come.

She cleared her throat. "How long?"

"A few hours. You were brought in by the guards. One of them said you were near the orchard."

"And the boy?" she asked carefully.

"Gabriel?" The midwife hesitated.

"He's fine."

Just like that. He's fine. Like he shouldn't exist.

Like the question had scratched the surface of something no one wanted her to dig into. Catalina shifted, pulled the sheet tighter over her chest. "Am I...?"

"You're not poisoned, if that's what you're thinking," the midwife said, almost smiling.

"But your body's been trying to tell you something."

Catalina stilled. "What do you mean?"

The woman's eyes softened.

"You're pregnant, señorita."