Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN IN THE TREE
The woman was still alive.
That was the first miracle.
The second was that Ramon Ortega reached her before the rope finished what whoever left her there had intended.
“Move,” he ordered.
Victor and Diego were already beneath the oak.
Matteo climbed the lower trunk while Victor cut through the restraint securing the woman above them. Ramon lowered the little girl to the ground and pulled off his coat.
“Stay behind me.”
“No!” she cried. “Mom!”
Ramon caught her gently before she could rush forward.
“They’re helping her.”
The woman dropped the final few feet into Diego and Victor’s arms.
She was perhaps thirty-two.
Dark hair.
Pale skin.
Mud streaked across her face.
Her wrists were badly marked, and one side of her neck showed angry bruising, but her chest moved.
Barely.
“Pulse,” Victor said.
Matteo checked.
“Weak.”
Ramon pulled out his phone.
“Ambulance. State police. Send coordinates.”
Diego looked at him.
“Boss, if whoever did this is still nearby—”
“Then they can watch us save her.”
The little girl dropped beside her mother.
“Mommy.”
The woman’s eyelids fluttered.
Ramon crouched.
“Can you hear me?”
Her lips moved.
He leaned closer.
At first, he thought she said a name.
Then she said it again.
“Gabriel.”
Every muscle in Ramon’s body locked.
Nobody used that name around him.
Not anymore.
Gabriel Ortega had been Ramon’s younger brother.
Nine years earlier, Gabriel disappeared after a fire destroyed one of the Ortega family’s warehouses outside Newark.
Investigators found human remains.
A ring.
Dental records.
Enough evidence for a funeral.
Ramon had carried the coffin.
He had watched their mother collapse beside the grave.
He had spent almost a decade believing his little brother was dead.
The woman opened her eyes.
Brown.
Terrified.
Focused directly on him.
“You’re Ramon.”
It wasn’t a question.
“How do you know me?”
She swallowed painfully.
The little girl grabbed her hand.
“Mom, I found him.”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
“Good girl.”
Ramon stared between them.
“Who are you?”
“Elena.”
“Elena what?”
“Morales.”
Then she whispered:
“Gabriel told me if I ever ran out of time…”
Her breath shook.
“…find the man with the black cars.”
Ramon’s pulse thundered.
“What does Gabriel have to do with you?”
The approaching sirens echoed faintly through the woods.
Elena tightened her grip around his wrist.
“He’s alive.”
Ramon stopped breathing.
Victor muttered something behind him.
Ramon barely heard it.
“Where?”
Elena’s eyes moved toward the deeper forest.
“They took him again.”
Again.
The word was worse than alive.
It meant Gabriel had been somewhere.
With someone.
All these years.
Then Elena looked toward her daughter.
“Protect Sofia.”
The seven-year-old pressed against her.
Ramon asked:
“Why?”
Elena’s next words changed everything.
“Because she’s his daughter.”
Ramon stared at the mud-covered little girl who had run barefoot out of the fog.
Sofia.
Gabriel’s daughter.
May you like
His niece.
And somewhere inside those woods, the brother Ramon had buried nine years ago might still be breathing.
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