Chapter 3 - THE MAN WHO GREW UP AS DANIEL HERRERA
Daniel Herrera did not look like Alejandro.
That was the first thing everyone noticed.
Alejandro had spent the drive to Santa Isabel imagining another version of himself.
Same eyes.
Same jaw.
Same strange sense of recognition.
Instead, Daniel was taller.
Darker.
Lean.
Black hair.
Brown eyes.
Nothing obvious connected them.
And somehow that made the mystery worse.
Daniel met them inside a private conference room near the surgical wing.
He wore dark green scrubs.
Carmen sat beside him.
She had already told him enough to make his anger visible.
Daniel looked at Alejandro.
“So you’re the prince.”
Alejandro frowned.
“The what?”
“The Navarro prince.”
“I don’t know what you were told.”
“That your family stole my life.”
Beatriz flinched.
Daniel noticed.
“Which one is she?”
“My mother,” Alejandro answered automatically.
Then hated how uncertain the word suddenly felt.
Daniel laughed without humor.
“Maybe.”
Beatriz closed her eyes.
Carmen touched Daniel’s arm.
“Let him explain.”
Alejandro placed copies of Ricardo’s documents on the table.
Blood test request.
Transfer authorization.
Confidentiality agreement.
Payment records.
Daniel read everything.
His hands started shaking.
Then he reached the line:
DEPENDENT MINOR M.H.
“I was Mateo.”
Carmen nodded.
“My father called you Daniel because Ricardo demanded the name change.”
Daniel looked at her.
“You knew?”
“No. I learned after Dad died.”
“Eight years ago?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Tears filled Carmen’s eyes.
“He made me promise.”
Daniel stood.
“So everyone gets to decide what I’m allowed to know.”
“No.”
“That seems to be the family tradition.”
Alejandro understood the anger.
He felt it too.
Daniel turned to Rosa.
“Did you hold me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see the babies switched?”
“No.”
“Then all of this could still be wrong.”
“Yes.”
Daniel sat again.
“Good.”
Everyone looked confused.
He laughed bitterly.
“I’m thirty-two years old. I have a job. A wife. A life. I don’t want some billionaire walking in and telling me I’m actually someone else because of one storm.”
Alejandro nodded.
“I don’t either.”
That surprised Daniel.
“You think I want your name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
Daniel studied him.
For the first time, the hostility softened slightly.
Then Beatriz asked, “Who raised you?”
Daniel looked at her.
“My grandparents.”
“Lucía’s parents?”
“Yes.”
“They knew?”
“They knew I was Lucía’s son.”
Beatriz’s face tightened.
“So they believed you were Mateo.”
“Yes.”
“Then why did Gabriel pay Ricardo?”
Daniel glanced at Carmen.
Carmen answered.
“Because Ricardo threatened to take Daniel.”
According to Gabriel’s private journal, Ricardo visited the Herrera family two weeks after the blackout.
He told them the child in their home was legally tied to the Navarro family.
If they challenged him, he would use the hospital confusion to claim kidnapping.
He also threatened Lucía.
“She was still inside Santa María,” Carmen said.
“Ricardo promised to release her if the Herreras stopped asking questions.”
Alejandro felt his stomach turn.
“Did he?”
“No.”
Lucía remained institutionalized eleven months.
Then her family was told she had escaped.
They searched.
No trace.
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“I grew up believing my mother abandoned me.”
Alejandro looked down.
Same cruelty.
Different direction.
Ricardo gave one child wealth and uncertainty.
The other poverty and abandonment.
Both grew up inside lies.
Rosa asked, “Did Lucía’s parents ever mention the bracelet?”
Daniel shook his head.
“My grandfather hated horses.”
That detail seemed meaningless until Beatriz suddenly looked at Alejandro.
“The bracelet.”
“What?”
“Javier had two.”
Silence.
“What do you mean two?”
“He commissioned matching silver horses.”
“For whom?”
Beatriz hesitated.
“One for Lucía.”
“And the other?”
“For me.”
Alejandro stared.
“Why?”
“Javier gave it to me after I became pregnant.”
Valeria whispered, “So both babies could have had identical bracelets.”
Exactly.
The photograph proved nothing.
Two bracelets.
Two babies.
A perfect false clue.
Rosa looked stunned.
“All these years…”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
Beatriz nodded.
“I stopped wearing mine months before delivery.”
“Where was it?”
“In my jewelry case.”
Alejandro’s pulse accelerated.
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
“Who took it?”
“Ricardo.”
Of course.
He had access to both bracelets.
That night, the identification records vanished.
He could place either bracelet on either child.
Maybe both.
Daniel leaned back.
“This is absurd.”
“No,” Alejandro said.
“It’s deliberate.”
The men looked at each other.
Not brothers.
Maybe brothers.
Maybe uncle and nephew.
Nothing made sense until genetics answered.
Daniel agreed to testing under one condition.
“No Navarro laboratory.”
Alejandro almost smiled.
“Agreed.”
An independent forensic genetics center collected samples.
Alejandro.
Daniel.
Beatriz.
Valeria.
Carmen offered Lucía’s preserved hair from an old brush her grandparents kept.
Javier Navarro’s biological material was available from a medical biopsy retained by a private clinic.
Ricardo’s sample existed from his autopsy.
Results would take days.
Meanwhile, Daniel wanted something else.
“Lucía.”
“What?”
“If she disappeared from Santa María, I want to know how.”
They searched old records.
The facility closed nineteen years ago.
Most documents were destroyed.
But one nurse remained alive.
Sister Elena Martín.
She had entered a convent after leaving psychiatric nursing.
They found her outside Ávila.
Elena remembered Lucía immediately.
“She wasn’t insane.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“I know.”
“She kept asking for her son.”
“Did she leave voluntarily?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
Elena looked frightened even after three decades.
“A car came at night.”
“Who?”
“Ricardo Navarro.”
Alejandro closed his eyes.
“He took her?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Did she fight?”
“Yes.”
Daniel stood.
“My mother was kidnapped.”
Elena nodded.
Then she said, “But she came back.”
Everyone froze.
“What?”
“Three months later.”
“Back to Santa María?”
“No.”
“To me.”
Elena had already left the facility.
Lucía found her apartment.
Thin.
Bruised.
Terrified.
She carried an envelope.
“She said she had escaped.”
“From where?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“What was in the envelope?”
Elena looked at Daniel.
“Proof of which baby was hers.”
Daniel’s face went still.
“Where is it?”
“I gave it back to her.”
“Why?”
“She said she was going to find her son.”
Daniel whispered, “She never came.”
Elena nodded.
“Two days later, the newspapers reported a woman had fallen from a bridge.”
Alejandro’s stomach tightened.
“Lucía?”
“They never identified the body.”
Daniel looked sick.
Then Elena said, “I never believed it was her.”
“Why?”
“Because six months later, I received a postcard.”
She disappeared into another room.
Returned with a plastic sleeve.
Inside was an old postcard from Lisbon.
No signature.
Only one handwritten sentence:
HE HAS MY SON, BUT I KNOW WHICH ONE.
Daniel stared.
“Is that her handwriting?”
Carmen began crying.
“Yes.”
Lucía had survived.
At least for six months.
Maybe longer.
On the back was a hotel stamp.
Hotel São Vicente.
Lisbon.
Alejandro immediately called his assistant.
“Find every record connected to this hotel from thirty-one years ago.”
Daniel gave him a cold look.
“Money can’t solve everything.”
“No.”
Alejandro stood.
“But for once, I’d like to use it to solve something instead of hide it.”
May you like
Daniel didn’t smile.
But he didn’t argue either.
