Chapter 3
Chapter 3: The Tragedy of Santa Isabel
The sterile smell of the nursery suddenly faded, replaced in Lucía’s memory by the sharp scent of antiseptic and the rhythmic beeping of hospital monitors.
Seven months ago, before she returned to private nannying, Lucía had been working as a maternity ward assistant at the prestigious Santa Isabel Hospital. It was there, on a stormy Tuesday night, that Rafael Alcázar and his beloved first wife, Elena, had welcomed their son into the world.
Elena was the antithesis of the cold woman currently ruling the Alcázar estate. She had been a woman of boundless warmth and gentle grace. That night, despite her exhaustion, her face had radiated an angelic joy. The couple had endured years of agonizing fertility treatments, countless heartbreaks, and rivers of tears. When the baby finally arrived, healthy and screaming, the entire delivery room had wept.
But Rafael had cried the hardest. The powerful, stoic billionaire had fallen to his knees beside his wife's bed, burying his face in her hands, his shoulders shaking with overwhelming gratitude.
"He is our miracle," Rafael had whispered over and over, kissing his wife’s forehead.
Later that evening, as Lucía was helping the head nurse clean the newborn, she had noticed the peculiar blemish.
"Look," Elena had said softly from her bed, her weak fingers gently tracing the red skin behind her newborn's left ear. "It looks just like a little star."
Rafael had leaned in closely, his eyes filled with awe. "Then we shall name him Mateo. Because he has come to guide us through the dark."
The joy, however, was violently short-lived.
Exactly three hours later, the miracle turned into a nightmare. During the frantic shift change, someone had slipped into the private recovery suite. The security cameras in the maternity wing had inexplicably malfunctioned. The only trace left behind was a severed hospital identification bracelet lying discarded on the cold bathroom tile.
Elena, still physically devastated from the birth, had woken up to an empty bassinet. Her agonizing, guttural screams had haunted Lucía’s nightmares for months.
The hospital was immediately swarmed by armed police, frantic journalists, and endless speculation. Rafael Alcázar had publicly offered a staggering one-million-euro reward for his son’s safe return, tearing the city apart to find his boy.
But Mateo was gone.
Elena never recovered. The spark of life within her died the moment she realized her baby was missing. She withered away in that hospital bed. Barely a month later, she suffered a massive cardiac arrest. The doctors officially cited profound physical exhaustion and complications from childbirth, but everyone in the ward knew the truth: Elena Alcázar had died of a broken heart.
Lucía had never forgotten Rafael’s face on the news, a hollow shell of the man who had wept with joy just weeks prior.
And she had never forgotten the star behind the baby's ear.
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Now, standing in the Alcázar mansion, the truth hit her with the force of a speeding train. The baby on the changing table was not an orphaned cousin named Bruno.
He was Mateo.
