CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 8
Vivian's Dark Past
The emergency alarms continued to echo through Castillo Estate.
Security teams flooded the corridors, searching every room, every hallway, every hidden passage.
But it was too late.
The evidence vault had been emptied.
Every hard drive containing surveillance footage from the underground chamber had disappeared.
There were no broken locks.
No damaged windows.
No signs of forced entry.
Only one conclusion remained.
Someone with authorized access had walked in... and walked out.
Alejandro stood in the center of the security control room, staring at dozens of surveillance monitors.
"Replay the last thirty minutes."
The technician obeyed immediately.
Camera after camera displayed empty corridors.
Nothing unusual.
Then—
At exactly 2:17 A.M., every screen went black for forty-three seconds.
When the footage returned, the vault door was closed.
The hard drives were gone.
The technician swallowed nervously.
"They knew exactly how to disable the system."
Alejandro's expression hardened.
"Only someone trained by Castillo Security could do that."
Someone from the inside.
Again.
Meanwhile, in a secure guest room on the second floor, the woman known as Vivian Moretti sat quietly by the window.
Her wrists were still restrained.
Yet she appeared strangely calm.
Almost relieved.
A knock sounded.
Alejandro entered alone.
He locked the door behind him.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Finally, he broke the silence.
"Who are you?"
She smiled faintly.
"I've been asking myself that for years."
"I want your real name."
She looked out the window.
"I don't remember it."
Alejandro frowned.
"What?"
"My real name was taken from me before I was old enough to write it."
She slowly turned toward him.
"When I was six years old..."
"...I lived in an orphanage."
"There were dozens of children."
"Most disappeared."
Alejandro listened without interrupting.
"We thought they had been adopted."
She laughed bitterly.
"They hadn't."
"They had been selected."
"Selected for what?"
"For Black Rose."
She lowered her eyes.
"They didn't want children."
"They wanted empty pages."
"They erased our names."
"Our birthdays."
"Our families."
"They taught us new identities."
"They taught us loyalty."
"And if we refused..."
She rolled up her sleeve.
Thin white scars crossed her forearm.
"The lessons became painful."
Alejandro studied the scars silently.
"They trained us to lie."
"To manipulate."
"To disappear."
"To become whoever they needed."
She looked directly into his eyes.
"I wasn't born Vivian Moretti."
"I became her."
Alejandro remained silent.
He sensed she was finally telling the truth.
"Who was the real Vivian Moretti?"
The woman hesitated.
Then whispered,
"My sister."
The room fell silent.
"My older sister's name was Lucia Moretti."
Alejandro remembered the household registry.
Lucia Moretti.
The woman believed to have died twenty years earlier.
"What happened to her?"
Tears filled the prisoner's eyes.
"She tried to escape."
"They caught her."
"I never saw her again."
"They gave me her identity."
"And told me..."
"'From today forward, you are Vivian.'"
Alejandro slowly sat across from her.
"So you've been living under your sister's name all these years."
She nodded.
"I stopped remembering my own."
She reached into the pocket of her coat.
Security had already searched her.
Yet somehow, she produced a tiny folded photograph hidden inside the lining.
She slid it across the table.
Alejandro opened it carefully.
It showed two little girls standing beneath a large oak tree.
One smiled brightly.
The other looked frightened.
On the back, written in faded ink, were three words.
Never forget us.
"The girl on the left..."
She pointed.
"Was Lucia."
"And the other?"
She closed her eyes.
"Me."
Alejandro looked closer.
The frightened child looked strangely familiar.
Not because he had seen her before.
But because...
She resembled someone else.
Someone he knew.
The same eyes.
The same smile.
The same shape of her face.
Elena.
"You noticed."
She smiled sadly.
"Everyone eventually does."
Alejandro looked up.
"What are you saying?"
She took a deep breath.
"I wasn't chosen to replace Elena because of coincidence."
"They selected me because I looked like her."
She leaned back.
"When Black Rose found me..."
"They spent years changing everything."
Her hair color.
Her accent.
Her handwriting.
Her posture.
Even the way she smiled.
"They weren't creating Vivian."
"They were creating..."
She whispered,
"A second Elena."
Alejandro felt a chill run through him.
The conspiracy had begun years before Elena's disappearance.
Long before he had even met his wife.
Someone had been preparing a replacement.
Waiting.
Planning.
Watching.
"But why?"
He finally asked.
"Why Elena?"
The woman lowered her head.
"I was never told everything."
"But I overheard enough."
She looked at him with tired eyes.
"Black Rose never cared about Elena."
"They cared about what she would inherit."
Alejandro frowned.
"The Castillo fortune?"
She shook her head.
"No."
"Something much older."
Before she could continue, the door burst open.
Eduardo entered, breathing heavily.
"Mr. Castillo!"
Alejandro stood immediately.
"What happened?"
"The forensic team decoded another file from the underground server."
"What is it?"
Eduardo's face had gone pale.
"It's a family tree."
Alejandro frowned.
"So?"
"It doesn't begin with the Castillo family."
Silence.
"It begins..."
"...with the Moretti family."
Minutes later, everyone gathered in the estate's war room.
The digital family tree covered the entire screen.
At first glance, it looked like an ordinary genealogy.
Then the investigators highlighted two names.
Lucia Moretti
Elena Rossi
Alejandro's heart skipped a beat.
Elena's maiden name.
Connected.
A red line linked both women to the same great-grandmother.
The lead investigator turned toward Alejandro.
"Mr. Castillo..."
He hesitated.
"According to these records..."
"Lucia Moretti and Elena Rossi were distant blood relatives."
The room fell into stunned silence.
Alejandro looked toward the woman known as Vivian.
She slowly closed her eyes.
"As I feared..."
She whispered.
"They chose me because I carried the same blood."
Another investigator enlarged the tree.
One branch had been deliberately erased.
Only a handwritten note remained.
'The First Daughter carries the Legacy.'
Below it was another line.
'Protect the bloodline at any cost.'
Alejandro looked around the room.
"What legacy?"
No one answered.
Because no one knew.
Not yet.
But one thing had become painfully clear.
Elena's kidnapping had never been about replacing a billionaire's wife.
It had been about a bloodline.
A secret preserved across generations.
And Black Rose had been willing to destroy countless lives to control it.
Just then, every phone in the room vibrated simultaneously.
A single encrypted message appeared on each screen.
YOU HAVE THE WRONG WOMAN.
A second message followed seconds later.
THE REAL VIVIAN MORETTI HAS BEEN WAITING FOR YOU SINCE THE BEGINNING.
The room fell silent.
Everyone slowly turned toward the woman in custody.
She looked down at her own hands.
Then whispered the words she had feared for years.
"If she's alive..."
"...then everything I believed about my life was a lie."
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End of Chapter 8
Coming Next: Chapter 9 – The Trial of Lies, where Alejandro faces an impossible choice: expose the conspiracy publicly with incomplete evidence or risk losing the last chance to find Sofia—and the real Vivian Moretti finally steps out of the shadows.
