You think you’ve survived the worst when you’re handed a small room off the kitchen and a bowl of hot stew that tastes like life returning.
You sleep like someone who hasn’t slept in weeks, body heavy, dreams full of bells that never ring.
In the morning, the hacienda is exactly what its name promised: quiet enough to hear your own heartbeat argue with your ribs.
And when Doña Matilde leads you through the main corridor toward the child’s wing, your palms go sweaty anyway.
“Don’t try to coddle him,” Matilde warns, keys clinking at her belt like a threat.
“He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t answer. He stares right through you.”
Her mouth tightens. “And if you break something, you’ll pay for it. If you upset him, you’ll leave.”
You nod because nodding is safer than asking questions.
You follow her past portraits of stern men and women who look like they never forgave anyone, not even themselves.
The walls smell faintly of wax and old roses, as if the past is being preserved on purpose.
At the end of the corridor, Matilde stops at a door that’s shut too tightly for a child’s room.
She knocks once, not gently.
Then she opens it.
Inside, a five-year-old boy sits on the floor with a wooden horse in his hand, not playing, just holding.
His dark hair falls into his eyes, and those eyes are the strangest thing you’ve ever seen: awake, but far away, like a candle behind thick glass.
He doesn’t look up when Matilde speaks his name.
“Mateo,” she says sharply. “This is Anaís. She’ll be here now.”
Mateo doesn’t blink.
Matilde looks at you like she expects you to fail immediately.
You step in slowly, kneel to be level with the child, and keep your voice soft, not sweet.
“Hi,” you say. “I’m Anaís. I’m not going to touch you unless you want me to.”
Mateo finally turns his head a fraction, as if your words have weight he recognizes.
Matilde snorts. “Talk all you want,” she mutters, closing the door behind her.
The click of the latch lands in your stomach like a stone.
You’re alone with a child who lives in silence, in a house that worships it.
You don’t push.
Instead you sit on the rug a few steps away and do the only thing you can think of: you take out a needle and thread and begin mending a torn seam on your apron.
Your hands know sewing the way lungs know breathing.
Minutes pass. The child watches, still silent.
Then, slowly, Mateo crawls closer.
Not to you.
To your hands.
He stares at the thread moving through fabric like it’s a magic trick.
When you finish, you cut the thread with your teeth and glance up gently.
Mateo’s eyes flicker, a tiny movement that feels like the first crack in a wall.
You reach into your pocket and pull out the only thing you kept from your old life: a small button carved from bone, shaped like a flower.
Your mother gave it to you years ago for luck.
You set it on the rug between you and Mateo and push it forward, not offering, just placing.
Mateo stares at it.
Then he reaches out and touches it with one finger, as careful as if it might bite.
Your breath catches.
Because it’s not just a reaction.
It’s a choice.
From that day, Mateo doesn’t speak, but he begins to move around you like you’re a warm corner of the world.
He follows you to the garden and watches you pull weeds.
He sits beside you while you peel potatoes.
He hides behind your skirt when Doña Matilde’s voice sharpens.
And every time Fermín passes through the hall and sees his son near you, his expression tightens with something you can’t name.
Relief… and fear.
One afternoon, Fermín stops you by the kitchen doorway.
“How is he,” he asks, voice clipped like he doesn’t trust hope.
You choose your words carefully. “He’s watching,” you say. “That’s a start.”
Fermín nods slowly. His eyes are tired, haunted.
“Don’t force him,” he says. “People have tried.”
You nod, then ask, “Why does the house feel like it’s holding its breath?”
Fermín’s jaw tightens.
“It’s just… grief,” he says. “Everything changed when his mother died.”
Then he turns away too fast, like the subject burns.
Later that night, you hear Mateo crying for the first time.
Not loud.
Not tantrum cries.
The kind that comes from a child trying to keep pain quiet because he thinks pain is something that gets punished.
You rush to his room and find him sitting up, shaking, eyes wide, pointing at the wardrobe.
Your scalp prickles. The wardrobe is old, heavy, carved with vines that look like they’re strangling the wood.
Mateo points again, desperate, but no sound comes out.
You kneel beside him. “Do you want me to open it,” you ask softly.
Mateo nods once, violently.
You open the wardrobe door, expecting a rat, a spider, a nightmare made of shadows.
Instead, a cold draft hits your face like a whisper.
Behind the hanging clothes, there’s a panel in the back wood that doesn’t match.
A seam.
A hidden edge.
Mateo’s small hand grabs your sleeve and pulls, eyes begging.
Your heart starts pounding so hard it hurts.
You press your fingers into the seam.
The panel shifts.
And a narrow space opens like a mouth.
Inside, you find a small tin box wrapped in cloth.
Your hands tremble as you pull it out, and you feel Mateo’s gaze locked on it like he’s been guarding it for years.
You open the tin.
Inside are letters.
Dozens of them, tied with a faded ribbon.
And on the top envelope, in careful handwriting, you read: Para mi hijo. Cuando estés listo.
To my son. When you’re ready.
Your throat tightens.
These are from Mateo’s mother.
The woman Fermín says “died.”
Mateo taps the letters, then taps his own chest, then points toward the hall, toward the master wing.
He can’t speak, but his meaning is clear.
He hid them. He doesn’t want them found.
You swallow hard, because in that instant you understand the silence of this house isn’t only grief.
It’s control.
You bring the box to your room and read one letter by candlelight, hands shaking.
The words are tender at first, full of love for her baby, small descriptions of Mateo’s laugh, his first steps, the way he used to grip her finger like it was a rope to life.
Then the tone changes.
Fermín isn’t who everyone thinks.
Matilde watches me.
They say I’m sick, but I’m not sick.
If something happens to me, don’t believe the story they tell.
Your stomach turns.
You keep reading.
The letters talk about a “doctor” who comes late at night.
About herbal teas that make her dizzy.
About fear of signing papers.
About a “family trust” that will transfer everything if she’s declared unfit.
You feel your pulse in your ears.
Mateo’s mother didn’t just die.
She was erased.
The next morning you watch Fermín at breakfast with new eyes.
He sits at the head of a long table like a man who owns the air.
He speaks quietly to Matilde, and she nods like a soldier.
When Mateo refuses to eat, Fermín’s expression doesn’t soften. It hardens.
“Leave him,” he says. “He’ll eat when he’s hungry.”
The words are normal on the surface, but you hear the edge under them.
Control.
Always control.
You take Mateo out to the garden afterward, and he leads you again.
Not to the flowers, not to the swings.
To the old chapel on the far edge of the property, half swallowed by ivy.
The door is locked, but Mateo points to a broken side window.
He looks at you with eyes that are suddenly not far away at all.
They’re urgent.
You climb through carefully and land in dust and stale air.
Inside, the chapel feels abandoned, but not forgotten.
Candles have been burned here recently.
A small altar cloth is folded neatly, too neat for a place nobody uses.
Mateo walks straight to the back, to a cracked statue of a saint.
He reaches behind it and pulls out something wrapped in oilcloth.
A ledger.
Your breath catches.
Mateo sits and opens it with small hands like he’s done this before, like he’s been returning to this secret when nobody sees.
The ledger isn’t prayers.
It’s numbers.
Names. Dates. Amounts.
And next to several names, a single word repeats like a curse: Silencio.
You flip through pages, and your skin goes cold.
Payments to people in town.
Payments to a doctor.
Payments to the bank.
And one line that makes your vision blur:
Gastos por “tratamiento” de la señora…
Expenses for “treatment” of the lady…
Mateo’s mother.
The entries stop abruptly on the date Fermín says she died.
You close the ledger slowly, heart racing.
Because now you’re holding proof.
Proof that the silence was purchased.
Back in the house, Doña Matilde watches you differently.
Her eyes linger too long.
Her questions become sharper.
When you pass her in the hall, she says, “The boy seems attached to you.”
You keep your face neutral. “He follows whoever doesn’t yell,” you answer.
Matilde smiles thinly. “Be careful,” she says. “Some attachments don’t last.”
The words sound like a warning.
Or a threat.
That night, you hear footsteps outside your door.
Slow. Deliberate.
You hold your breath, listening.
A key turns gently in the lock, testing it.
You feel your stomach drop as you realize your room doesn’t have the same brass lock Mateo’s room does.
You slide out of bed, silent, and press your hand to the small knife you keep for peeling apples.
The handle is cold.
The key stops turning.
A pause.
Then the footsteps retreat.
You don’t sleep after that.
In the morning, you hide the letters and ledger in the bottom of a flour barrel in the pantry, because Matilde would never check where she thinks you belong: the kitchen.
You keep one letter tucked into your bodice, the one that reads: If I disappear, look in the chapel.
It feels like carrying a ghost against your heart.
Days later, Fermín calls you into his office.
The curtains are drawn, and the room smells faintly of cigar smoke and something metallic.
He studies you with eyes that feel like measuring tape.
“You’ve been here long enough,” he says. “Tell me what you want.”
The question is strange, because men like Fermín don’t ask. They decide.
You choose your words carefully. “I want stability,” you say. “For Mateo.”
Fermín’s mouth tightens. “And for you.”
You nod. “And for me.”
He leans back, fingers steepled.
“I can give you a contract,” he says. “Better pay. Better room. But you’ll follow Matilde’s rules.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “And you’ll stop taking the boy to places you don’t need to be.”
Your blood goes cold.
He knows.
Or he suspects.
You keep your expression calm. “Mateo likes the garden,” you say lightly.
Fermín smiles without warmth. “Mateo likes what people teach him to like,” he replies.
Then he adds quietly, “Don’t teach him the wrong things.”
You leave the office with your skin crawling.
That night, Mateo leads you to the wardrobe again.
He points, then makes a new gesture: two fingers walking, then his small fist closing like a door.
He’s telling you something without words.
Someone is coming.
You crouch and whisper, “Do you mean Matilde?”
Mateo shakes his head violently, eyes wide.
He points toward the master wing.
Fermín.
Your throat tightens.
You realize Mateo didn’t “stop talking” because of grief alone.
He stopped because silence was safer.
Because he saw something.
Because he knows the house’s secret isn’t only letters and ledgers.
It’s what happened to his mother.
On the third night after the office warning, the doctor arrives.
You see him through the kitchen window, stepping out of a carriage, hat low, carrying a black bag.
He doesn’t go to the servants’ area.
He goes straight to the master wing like he belongs there.
Matilde meets him halfway and speaks to him in a hush, glancing around like a thief.
You hide behind the pantry door, pulse pounding.
Mateo’s small hand slips into yours, squeezing hard.
And in that squeeze you feel his message: Now.
You make a decision that tastes like iron.
You follow.
Barefoot, silent, down corridors that creak like they want to betray you.
You reach the landing outside the master bedroom and stop behind a heavy curtain, heart hammering so loud you’re sure they’ll hear.
Inside, Fermín’s voice is low.
The doctor’s voice responds, hesitant.
And Matilde’s voice cuts in, sharp: “It has to be quiet.”
Then you hear the phrase that turns your stomach to ice.
“Just like with the first one,” the doctor says.
First one.
Your breath catches.
Fermín’s reply is colder than the chapel stones.
“It worked before,” he says. “It will work again.”
Mateo’s fingers dig into your hand, and you feel him trembling.
Because now you understand.
Mateo’s mother wasn’t an accident.
She was a test run.
And someone else is next.
You don’t know who yet.
But you know what you have to do.
You back away silently, pull Mateo with you, and return to your room like you never left.
Then you do the thing you’ve spent your whole life avoiding: you prepare to fight.
You gather the letters.
You copy the ledger pages by hand because you don’t trust this house with anything you can’t carry.
You hide a letter inside Mateo’s coat, stitched into the lining.
And before dawn, you write a note and slip it under Don Silvestre’s door.
If anything happens to me, go to the chapel. Look behind the saint. Protect the boy.
When the sun rises, you don’t go to the kitchen.
You go to the front gate with Mateo’s hand in yours.
You plan to leave.
To run.
But the gate is locked with a new chain that wasn’t there yesterday.
You stare at it, heart sinking, and you hear hooves behind you.
Fermín rides up slowly, calm as a predator.
Matilde stands behind him like a shadow.
Fermín looks down at you with that same tired expression, but now the tiredness looks like impatience.
“Where are you going,” he asks.
You lift your chin, forcing your voice to stay steady. “To the town,” you say. “Mateo needs air.”
Fermín’s eyes flick to Mateo, then back to you.
“No,” he says simply. “You’re not.”
His voice stays quiet, but it’s the quiet that comes before a door slams.
Mateo steps forward suddenly, and for the first time you see him move with purpose.
He lifts his small hand and points at Fermín.
Then he points at his own mouth.
Then he closes his lips tight and shakes his head violently.
He’s saying it without sound:
You took my voice.
Fermín’s face twitches.
Just a small crack, but you see it.
You realize Mateo’s silence has always been evidence.
Fermín’s voice turns sharper. “Take the boy inside,” he orders Matilde.
Matilde steps forward, reaching for Mateo.
You move instantly, placing yourself between them.
“No,” you say, louder now. “He stays with me.”
Fermín’s eyes narrow.
“Remember your place,” he says.
You reach into your bodice and pull out the letter from Mateo’s mother.
You hold it up like a torch.
“My place,” you say, voice shaking but fierce, “is with the truth.”
You step forward one inch. “And I know what you did.”
For the first time, Fermín’s calm fractures.
Not into panic.
Into anger.
“Careful,” he warns.
You don’t flinch.
Because you finally understand the secret of El Silencio.
It isn’t just a quiet hacienda.
It’s a machine built to erase people.
And you, Anaís, the girl who came with nothing, are about to become the one sound it can’t swallow.
TO BE CONTINUED…
