Chapter 72: The Shadow That Lurks

LUCÍA POV

Two months had passed since the last time I saw him. Two months since I entered that hospital in San Cristóbal and found him unconscious, his body covered in tubes and purplish bruises. Two months since I learned that he was still alive and breathing. Since then, each day had become easier for me to breathe as well. Knowing that he was okay, that he was recovering, gave me a peace I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Watching him on live internet broadcasts from the Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel—recovered, walking first with crutches and then without them, officiating Mass with a firm voice—was like witnessing a medical miracle unfold before my eyes. I admired him. I was proud of him. But it also hurt me to my very soul.

At night in Vancouver, when everything fell silent in the bakery, I would sit with Isabella and Sofía in my arms and watch the religious broadcasts on my laptop. Mateo spoke with a serenity that completely disarmed me. People adored him, touched him as if he were a living saint. If only they knew…

If they knew that the man who now raised the cross with a firm voice and preached purity had also been a man of flesh, desire, and weakness. My man. The father of my twin daughters.

But I could never appear. I couldn’t destroy the life that had cost him so much to build. So I settled for watching him from afar, behind a glowing screen, guarding his secret as if it were a capital crime.

One ordinary morning, I felt someone watching me as I walked to the nearby park with the girls in their double stroller. I didn’t see anyone suspicious, but the sensation was unmistakable and chilling. The back of my neck burned. Every step I took felt accompanied by another, right behind me in the shadows.

I thought it was accumulated nerves. I had spent months looking over my shoulder with paranoid fear that Damián would find me. I tried to ignore it, to convince myself it was my imagination, but in the following days everything worsened dramatically.

At the park, I noticed a man in a dark jacket always sitting on the same wooden bench.

He did nothing. He didn’t read the newspaper, didn’t talk on the phone—he just stared.

When I left with the girls, he stood up too. Always.

That night I didn’t sleep a single minute. At dawn, I called Mónica, my friend in San Cristóbal who knew part of my story.

“I need to know if you’ve seen or heard anything about Damián,” I said tensely.

There was a brief but meaningful silence.

“He disappeared from the neighborhood weeks ago,” she replied in a low, almost whispered voice. “Since the monsignor’s accident, no one knows anything about him. Some say he fled to another state, others that he left the country. But there are very strong rumors that he was the one who ran him over intentionally.”

My blood literally froze in my veins.

“Are you completely sure?”

“No one has officially confirmed it. But, Lucía… be very careful. That man is not right in the head. And if he’s still looking for you, he won’t stop until he finds you. You know him.”

I thanked her with a trembling voice and hung up. I stared at the window with the curtains drawn. Outside, rain fell over Vancouver. I felt real fear for the first time in months.

I told my Aunt Leticia everything that same morning while we prepared the oven.

“I feel like I’m being watched constantly,” I told her. “Like someone follows me when I go out with the girls.”

She crossed her arms, thoughtful and worried.

“Don’t work yourself up, child. Sometimes you think you see things that aren’t there when you’re scared. But we still need to be very careful.”

“It’s not imagination, Aunt. I feel it in my bones. I know it.”

Leticia looked at me intently for a moment, then nodded seriously.

“All right. We’ll take extreme precautions. Don’t go out alone ever. Don’t leave the girls unsupervised. If you go to the park, tell me and we’ll go together, the three of us.”

“I’d rather not go out at all for a long time.”

“As you wish. But don’t lock yourself away completely. Don’t give fear all the power.”

I nodded, though inside I had already decided: I would not go back to the park. The twins were still very small, barely six months old. They didn’t walk, barely babbled. They didn’t need to be outside. I would only take them out when absolutely necessary.

Weeks passed like that. I worked in the bakery kneading bread, slept little and poorly, took care of Isabella and Sofía. Every day was the same as the last, mechanical. But the fear was still there, crouched like an animal in the dark.

At night I watched Mateo’s videos from the cathedral. He was already walking without crutches, with a firm, confident stride, as if the hit-and-run had only been another test God had sent him. His voice sounded deeper, surer, holier.

Sometimes I thought about writing him an anonymous email. About telling him I was alive, that the girls were growing healthy, that he had two beautiful identical daughters. But I always stopped before pressing “send.”

I couldn’t do it. I mustn’t.

One gray morning, everything changed forever.

I had finished kneading sweet bread and was cleaning the counter when I saw a white envelope among the usual mail. It had no return address or stamp. My name was written by hand, in a handwriting I recognized instantly with pure terror.

I opened it, shaking violently.

It contained only one sentence in black ink:

“I found you, bitch. And you’re going to pay for stealing MY daughters from me.”

The paper fell from my hands as if it burned. The air escaped my chest in a gasp. The room spun.

Damián.

I would never forget his handwriting. His way of forming letters—firm, tight, filled with contained rage.

I leaned against the counter to keep from fainting. I felt my heart literally trying to burst out of my chest. I ran to the back room and searched desperately for my aunt.

“Aunt, he found me,” I said almost without a voice, choking. “He sent me a letter. Damián knows where I am.”

She took the paper from my hands and read it in silence. Her face hardened like stone.

“Are you completely sure it’s him?”

“I know it is. It’s his handwriting. And he says ‘my daughters.’ He thinks they’re his.”

“Maybe it’s a sick joke from someone.”

“No, Aunt. It’s him. I know it with absolute certainty.”

Leticia took a deep breath, controlling herself.

“Calm down, child. We won’t do anything rash. Maybe that’s exactly what he wants—for you to panic, to run, to make a fatal mistake.”

“You don’t know him like I do, Aunt. He’s capable of anything. If he finds us, he’ll kill all three of us without hesitation. Me, Isabella, and Sofía.”

She grabbed my shoulders firmly.

“All right. We’ll think of something fast. I’m getting you out of here.”

That night we didn’t sleep a single second. My aunt made discreet calls. She searched for contacts, old trusted acquaintances. She asked a truck driver who delivered flour to the bakery every week to help us without asking questions.

The plan was simple and desperate: leave Vancouver without leaving any trace.

Two days of terror passed. I tried to maintain a normal routine so as not to raise suspicion, but I couldn’t concentrate. I checked the windows every half hour, turned off the lights early, woke up at the slightest street noise.

Then another letter arrived. Worse than the first.

This time there was no envelope. It was slipped under the front door.

“Don’t try anything stupid. I know exactly where you are. And I’m going to catch you very soon. You and the girls.”

The paper was damp from rain. The letters smeared by water.

My hands shook to the bone. Violent nausea hit me.

“Aunt, we can’t wait any longer,” I said in panic. “I have to leave now. Today.”

She nodded with determination.

“All right, child. At dawn tomorrow you’ll leave with the flour truck. He leaves before sunrise. He’ll drop you at the Seattle train station. From there, take the first train going anywhere. Don’t say your real name. Trust no one.”

I hugged her desperately, crying.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Aunt.”

“Just promise me you’ll call when you get wherever you’re going.”

“I promise.”

That night I wrapped Isabella and Sofía in thick wool blankets. I packed the essentials into a small backpack: identification documents, some cash, the photo of Mateo in his cassock that I had saved from a newspaper, and a change of clothes for each of them. Nothing more. I couldn’t carry extra weight while fleeing.

Dawn arrived with a strange, heavy silence. The flour truck stopped in front of the bakery before the sun rose over the mountains. The driver, a burly man with a gray beard named Tom, helped me climb into the back without asking questions.

“Don’t worry, miss. Nobody will see you,” he said in a deep voice in English.

I settled among the sacks of white flour, the twins asleep in my arms. My heart beat so hard that my chest physically hurt. When the engine roared to life, I felt like I was leaving everything behind: my temporary refuge, my beloved aunt, the few months of relative peace I had had.

During the four-hour trip I didn’t speak. I barely moved. I didn’t cry. I just listened to the roar of the engine and prayed in silence. My God, protect them. Protect him too.

The journey lasted more than four hours along secondary roads. The truck finally stopped at a train station on the outskirts of Seattle. Tom helped me down carefully and wished me luck with genuine concern.

“Keep moving, miss. And don’t look back.”

I thanked him with a choked voice. I walked with the girls in my arms and the backpack on my back to the ticket booth. I bought a ticket under the false name “María González.” The train departed in twenty minutes, heading south.

I sat on the cold wooden bench, the twins curled against my chest. I felt the icy November air slip through my thin clothes. I didn’t know exactly where I was going. I only knew I had to disappear completely.

When the train arrived with a long whistle, I boarded with difficulty and found a seat by a dirty window. The machine lurched forward. I watched the streets of Seattle drift away, buildings turning into gray dots, lights fading into the misty distance.

I breathed deeply for the first time in weeks.

Maybe I had made it. Maybe, at last, the three of us were safe.

I held Isabella and Sofía tightly against my chest.

“Everything is going to be okay, my loves,” I whispered, kissing their foreheads. “I swear it with my life.”

But as the train gained speed, I couldn’t help looking through the fogged window toward the platform we were leaving behind.

Among the trees in the parking lot, I could have sworn I saw a black truck parked in the shadows, and a male silhouette watching the train pass with fixation.

I didn’t know if it was my paranoid mind or if it was really there. But I felt that familiar, terrifying chill run down my spine.

Damián.

I whispered his name in silence like a curse. And I prayed with all my soul that this time, he wouldn’t be able to reach us.

But deep down, with a terror that froze my blood, I knew the truth:

Damián would never give up.

And I had just made a mistake that could cost all three of us our lives.