PART 3 — THE WOMAN WE BURIED WASN’T ISABEL
I stared at the photograph until the screen blurred.
The woman standing inside the notary’s office had Isabel’s face.
Her narrow chin.
Her dark, deep-set eyes.
The scar cutting through her right eyebrow.
A scar she had gotten when we were eleven, after falling from the stone wall behind my grandmother’s house.
I had been there when it happened.
I had held a towel against her forehead while she screamed.
No one could copy that memory.
No disguise could create that scar.
But Isabel was dead.
I had watched her coffin disappear into the ground sixteen years earlier.
“Are you certain it’s her?” Officer Marta asked through the speaker.
“Yes.”
My voice came out as a whisper.
“She’s my cousin.”
Lucía sat beside me, staring at the image.
“The cousin who died?”
I nodded.
Marta was silent for several seconds.
“How did she die?”
“Car accident.”
“How old was she?”
“Twenty.”
“And you attended the funeral?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see her body?”
The question struck me harder than I expected.
“I saw the coffin.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
My mouth went dry.
The funeral came back in pieces.
My aunt Teresa collapsing against the church wall.
My uncle Ramón refusing to look at anyone.
The sealed white coffin.
The priest saying the injuries had been too severe for an open viewing.
The smell of lilies.
The rain striking black umbrellas as four men lowered the coffin into the family plot.
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t see her body.”
Marta exhaled slowly.
“Do you have contact information for Isabel’s parents?”
“My aunt died seven years ago. My uncle still lives near Toledo, but we haven’t spoken in a long time.”
“How long?”
“About five years.”
“Why?”
I looked toward the window.
The morning light had begun to creep through Lucía’s curtains, but the room still felt dark.
“After my mother died, the family stopped gathering. Uncle Ramón became isolated. He blamed himself for Isabel’s accident.”
“Why?”
“He had lent her his car.”
“Did the police investigate the crash?”
“I assume so.”
“You assume?”
“I was eighteen. The adults handled everything.”
Marta’s voice became firm.
“Send me your uncle’s full name and address. Do not contact him yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because if the woman in that video is Isabel, we don’t know who has been protecting her.”
I looked at Sergio standing behind her in the photograph.
His hand rested casually against the wall.
He looked relaxed.
Comfortable.
As though he had walked into that office with a plan rehearsed many times.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“We’re requesting the full video, identification logs, and witness statements. We’re also checking whether the woman used your original identity card or a duplicate.”
“My identity card is in my purse.”
“Check it.”
I opened my purse and found the card in its usual pocket.
“It’s here.”
“Look at the expiration date.”
I read it aloud.
Marta became quiet again.
“What?” I asked.
“The woman presented a card with the same number and expiration date.”
Lucía covered her mouth.
“How is that possible?”
“A high-quality counterfeit,” Marta said. “Or someone obtained access to government records.”
My heart began beating faster.
Carlos had access to my employee file.
Sergio had access to my home.
Rocío had access to my documents.
And Isabel—or a woman who looked exactly like her—had access to my identity.
They had not copied one paper.
They had constructed another Elena.
“Officer,” I said, “the message told me to ask Carlos what happened to the woman who signed my name.”
“We’re sending officers to speak with him.”
“He knows you’re coming.”
“Why?”
“He called me before you did. He said my employment file had been downloaded.”
“Did you tell him about the notary?”
“No.”
“Good.”
A sound came from Marta’s side of the call. A door opening. A man speaking quickly.
“Stay with Lucía,” she told me. “Lock the door. I’ll call you back.”
The line ended.
I lowered the phone.
Lucía took it gently from my hand.
“You need to breathe.”
“I buried her.”
“You buried a coffin.”
“I watched my aunt lose her only daughter.”
“Maybe your aunt didn’t know.”
I turned toward her.
“Then who was in the coffin?”
Neither of us had an answer.
At nine thirty, someone knocked on Lucía’s door.
Three slow knocks.
Then silence.
Lucía and I froze.
Neither of us had ordered anything.
The police knew the address, but Marta had promised to call before coming.
The knock came again.
“Elena?”
A man’s voice.
I recognized it immediately.
Carlos.
Lucía grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t open it.”
“Elena, I know you’re inside,” Carlos called. “We need to talk before the police arrive.”
My fear sharpened into anger.
I walked toward the door but kept the security chain fastened.
“How did you find me?”
“I spoke to Sergio.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“He didn’t know where I was staying.”
“He guessed you would go to Lucía.”
That answer frightened me more than if Carlos had admitted following me.
“What do you want?”
“To help you.”
“You downloaded my employment file.”
“No.”
“You said it was downloaded twice.”
“It was.”
“From whose account?”
Silence.
“Carlos?”
“Open the door.”
“Answer the question.”
“I can explain everything, but not in the hallway.”
Lucía stood behind me holding a heavy glass vase.
I almost smiled.
She looked terrified, but she was ready to swing it.
“Start explaining,” I said.
Carlos lowered his voice.
“One download came from my account.”
I felt Lucía tense behind me.
“And the second?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“My password was stolen.”
“When?”
“Months ago.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
“Because I knew who used it.”
“Who?”
He leaned closer to the door.
“Sergio.”
The name hung between us.
“How did my husband get your password?”
“I gave it to him.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The truth I had been waiting for.
“What did he pay you?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“What did he pay you?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why?”
Carlos’s voice cracked.
“Because he had something on me.”
Lucía mouthed, Call Marta.
I opened the police contact on my phone and pressed the call button without speaking.
Then I returned my attention to the door.
“What did Sergio have?”
“You need to understand that years ago, before you worked for me, I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“I helped someone create employment records.”
“For Isabel?”
He went silent.
That silence was enough.
“You knew she was alive.”
“I knew a woman using that name.”
My stomach twisted.
“Was it Isabel?”
“I don’t know.”
“You sat with her.”
“I met her twice.”
“You gave Sergio my personal documents.”
“He said he only needed proof of your income for a mortgage application.”
“Why would he need my birth certificate?”
“I didn’t give him that.”
“My signature?”
“No.”
“My bank statements?”
“No.”
“Then what did you give him?”
“Salary records. A copy of your employee identification. Your office address. That was all.”
“That was enough to help them impersonate me.”
“I didn’t know what they were planning.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because Sergio called me yesterday afternoon. He said the transaction was happening that night and that, once it was finished, we would all be free.”
I gripped the edge of the door.
“Free from what?”
“He didn’t say.”
“What transaction?”
“The apartment sale.”
“That wasn’t supposed to be completed until next week.”
Carlos took a step closer.
“No, Elena. The apartment was only the beginning.”
I stopped breathing.
“What else were they doing?”
“They were transferring something from your mother’s estate.”
“My mother didn’t leave an estate.”
“She did.”
I shook my head.
“She left me this apartment and a few thousand euros. That’s all.”
“That’s what Sergio wanted you to believe.”
Lucía looked at me in confusion.
Carlos continued before I could respond.
“There’s a rural property outside Toledo. Farmland, an abandoned house, and several hectares near a planned development zone. It was registered under your grandmother’s name.”
“My grandmother died twenty-two years ago.”
“The inheritance was disputed. It was never properly transferred.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“You and Isabel were the final surviving beneficiaries.”
The hallway seemed to narrow around me.
“Isabel died.”
“That’s why everything should have passed to you.”
“Should have?”
“Sergio discovered the property three years ago. Its value increased after the new transport project was announced.”
“How much?”
Carlos hesitated.
“How much?”
“At least four million euros.”
Lucía whispered my name.
I barely heard her.
Four million euros.
Sergio had spent years complaining that I was selfish for refusing Rocío a handbag.
He had screamed about electricity bills.
He had taken money from my purse.
All while hiding an inheritance worth millions.
“Why did they need Isabel?” I asked.
“Because the original inheritance records listed both of you. If she was alive, she could challenge the transfer.”
“So they brought her back from the dead to sign away her rights?”
“No.”
Carlos’s voice dropped.
“They brought her back to take yours.”
A cold wave moved over my body.
“How?”
“The woman claiming to be Isabel filed documents stating that you had died.”
I couldn’t understand the sentence.
“What?”
“She signed a declaration that you died abroad five months ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
“They had a death certificate.”
My hand slipped from the doorframe.
“They were trying to legally erase you, Elena.”
Inside my pocket, the call to Officer Marta was still connected.
I prayed she could hear every word.
Carlos continued.
“Once you were declared dead, the apartment, your accounts, and your share of the Toledo land could be transferred through the estate process.”
“To Isabel?”
“To Sergio.”
“How could Sergio inherit from me if I was supposedly dead?”
“As your husband.”
The room began spinning.
The insurance policy.
The forged identity.
The property sale.
They had not merely planned to steal from me.
They had created a legal trail designed to continue after my disappearance.
“What was supposed to happen last night?” I asked.
Carlos didn’t answer.
I pressed my face closer to the gap in the door.
“Rocío said I had no idea what was supposed to happen last night.”
“Elena—”
“What were they planning?”
He looked down the hallway.
“I don’t know everything.”
“You know enough.”
“Sergio told me he needed access to your employee file one final time. He wanted your emergency contact details and your travel history.”
“Why?”
“He said they needed to choose a country.”
My knees weakened.
“A country for what?”
“For where you supposedly died.”
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Then Carlos whispered, “But after you reported him, everything collapsed.”
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, I remembered Sergio’s threat.
The police won’t be there forever.
The plan had collapsed.
That didn’t mean the people behind it had stopped.
“Where is Isabel?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You met her two times.”
“Both meetings were arranged by Sergio.”
“Where?”
“Once at the café in the photograph. Once at a private medical clinic.”
“What clinic?”
Carlos looked over his shoulder again.
“Elena, open the door. Someone may have followed me.”
“You’re not coming inside.”
“I came to warn you.”
“You came because you’re afraid of being arrested.”
“Both can be true.”
A noise came from the stairwell.
The elevator doors opened.
Carlos turned.
His face changed.
“Elena,” he said urgently. “Whatever happens, do not believe—”
A sharp crack interrupted him.
Carlos slammed against my door.
Lucía screamed.
For one confused second, I thought he had punched the wood.
Then he slid downward.
A dark stain spread across the back of his shirt.
I stumbled away from the door.
Someone had shot him.
The security chain shook as his body collapsed against it.
Footsteps rushed along the hallway.
Not toward us.
Away.
Lucía called emergency services while I looked through the peephole.
The corridor was empty except for Carlos lying on the floor.
The elevator doors were closing.
Just before they met, I saw a woman inside.
Dark hair.
Black coat.
A pale face.
And a thin scar through her right eyebrow.
“Isabel,” I whispered.
The elevator disappeared.
Carlos was still alive.
Barely.
Police officers arrived within minutes, followed by paramedics. Officer Marta came running down the hallway with her weapon drawn.
She had heard almost the entire conversation through my phone.
The bullet had entered Carlos’s shoulder and passed near his lung. The paramedics stabilized him before rushing him to the hospital under police guard.
Marta stood inside Lucía’s apartment while investigators photographed the corridor.
“You saw the shooter?” she asked.
“I saw a woman in the elevator.”
“Could you identify her?”
“She looked like Isabel.”
“Did you see a weapon?”
“No.”
“Her face clearly?”
“Only for a second.”
Lucía handed Marta the photograph from the notary.
“It was her,” Lucía insisted. “Elena recognized her.”
Marta studied the image.
“The building’s cameras will tell us more.”
“They were disabled,” an officer called from the hallway.
Marta cursed under her breath.
“All of them?”
“Only the cameras covering this floor and the lobby exit.”
That meant the shooting had been planned.
Someone knew Carlos was coming.
Someone knew where we were.
Marta turned toward me.
“Did you tell anyone you were staying here?”
“No.”
“Did Lucía?”
“No,” Lucía answered.
“Carlos said Sergio guessed,” I said.
Marta’s expression hardened.
“Sergio is still in custody. He denied knowing this address.”
“He lied.”
“Possibly. But his phone was taken when he was arrested. He couldn’t have warned the shooter this morning.”
“Rocío?”
“Her location is currently unknown.”
“What do you mean, unknown?”
“Officers went to her apartment. She wasn’t there.”
My phone vibrated.
Everyone in the room looked at it.
Another message from the same unknown number.
This time, it contained a video.
Officer Marta told me not to touch anything while a technician connected the phone to an evidence device.
The video began playing.
A woman sat in a dark room facing the camera.
It was Isabel.
Older, thinner, but unmistakably Isabel.
She wore no makeup. Her hair was pulled behind her head. The scar through her eyebrow was visible.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she looked directly into the lens.
“Elena, I know you think I’m the one stealing your life.”
Her voice brought back memories I had buried for years.
Whispered secrets during family dinners.
Summer nights on my grandmother’s roof.
Isabel laughing as we ran barefoot through the fields.
I covered my mouth.
“But you need to understand something,” she continued. “I did not choose to disappear.”
The recording shook slightly, as though someone else was holding the camera.
“I was told you knew I was alive. I was told you helped them.”
I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me.
“I never knew.”
Isabel looked to one side.
Fear crossed her face.
“They said you had taken everything. The property. The money. My identity. They said your mother arranged the funeral because she wanted me gone.”
“My mother?”
My voice broke.
In the video, Isabel leaned closer to the camera.
“Sergio promised he would help me prove what your family did. But three months ago, I realized he wasn’t helping me. He was using both of us.”
Marta paused the video.
“When was this recorded?”
The technician examined the file.
“Approximately twenty minutes ago.”
“She’s nearby,” Marta said.
The video continued.
“If you found the gray folder, then Sergio’s plan failed. But the papers in that folder are only copies. The originals are hidden where our family buried the truth.”
Isabel swallowed.
“Go to Grandmother’s house outside Toledo. In the old bedroom, remove the floorboard beneath the blue wardrobe.”
I remembered that house.
It had been abandoned for years.
After my grandmother died, no one wanted it.
Not even Uncle Ramón.
“There’s a metal box underneath,” Isabel said. “Inside it, you’ll find the original inheritance papers and the medical records from the night I supposedly died.”
She began crying.
“But don’t go alone.”
A sound came from behind the camera.
A door opening.
Isabel turned sharply.
“We’re out of time.”
She looked into the lens one final time.
“Elena, the woman in the grave is not a stranger.”
My chest tightened.
“She is someone you loved.”
A man’s voice shouted from outside the frame.
Isabel reached toward the camera.
The image shook violently.
Before the video ended, she whispered five words:
“Your mother chose the coffin.”
The screen went black.
No one in the room moved.
My mother had organized Isabel’s funeral.
My mother had selected the sealed coffin.
My mother had refused to let me approach it before the burial.
At eighteen, I had believed she was protecting me from seeing Isabel’s injuries.
Now I wondered whether she had been protecting something else.
Officer Marta replayed the final seconds.
“The woman in the grave is someone you loved,” she repeated.
Lucía looked at me.
“Who else died around that time?”
I searched my memory.
The year of Isabel’s accident had been filled with confusion.
My father had already left the family.
My grandmother had been dead for several years.
My mother had worked long hours and rarely spoke about relatives.
Then I remembered a face I had not thought about in more than a decade.
A woman who had disappeared only days before Isabel’s supposed accident.
My mother’s younger sister.
Aunt Sofía.
The family said she had moved to Argentina after an argument.
She never called.
Never wrote.
Never returned for my mother’s funeral.
“What?” Marta asked.
“My aunt Sofía disappeared that same week.”
“Was a missing-person report filed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have a photograph of her?”
I opened an old cloud album on my phone.
After several minutes, I found a picture from my grandmother’s birthday.
My mother stood in the center.
Isabel and I were children beside her.
Aunt Sofía stood at the edge of the photograph.
Dark hair.
Narrow chin.
Deep-set eyes.
She looked enough like Isabel to be her older sister.
Or, from a badly damaged body, to be mistaken for her.
Officer Marta photographed the screen.
“We need to locate your uncle.”
“Ramón?”
“If he attended the funeral, he may know who was buried.”
My phone rang again.
This time, it was a private number.
Marta gestured for me to answer on speaker.
“Hello?”
At first, I heard only breathing.
Then an elderly man spoke.
“Elena?”
I recognized my uncle Ramón’s voice immediately.
“Uncle?”
“You must not come to Toledo.”
Marta motioned for me to keep him talking.
“Why?”
“Because they’re expecting you.”
“Who?”
He began to cry.
I had never heard Ramón cry. Not even at Isabel’s funeral.
“I tried to stop them,” he said. “Your mother said it was the only way to keep you both alive.”
“What did my mother do?”
“She switched the girls.”
My entire body went cold.
“What girls?”
“Isabel and Sofía.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No.”
His breathing became ragged.
“No, Elena. Not your aunt Sofía.”
A long pause followed.
Then he said the words that destroyed everything I thought I knew about my family.
“Sofía was not your aunt.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Who was she?”
“She was your sister.”
The room disappeared around me.
“My mother only had one daughter.”
“That is what she told everyone.”
Ramón sobbed.
“Sofía was born when your mother was sixteen. Your grandmother raised her as the youngest daughter to protect the family’s reputation.”
My knees gave way, and Lucía caught me.
Ramón continued speaking, but his words seemed to come from far away.
“When Isabel discovered the truth, she threatened to expose everything. Three days later, Sofía disappeared. Then Isabel’s car was found burned beside the road.”
“Was Sofía in the car?”
“I don’t know.”
“You buried someone!”
“We buried what your mother told us was left of Isabel.”
“Did you see the body?”
“No.”
“Who identified her?”
“Your mother.”
My vision blurred.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because Sofía had learned something about Elena.”
Marta leaned closer to the phone.
“About what?”
Ramón’s breathing stopped.
Then I heard another voice in the background.
A woman.
Calm.
Very close to him.
“You’ve said enough.”
There was a crash.
“Uncle Ramón!”
The line remained open.
I heard him struggling.
Furniture scraping.
A muffled cry.
Then a single gunshot.
The call ended.
Marta immediately began shouting orders.
Officers rushed from the apartment.
I stood in the middle of the room, unable to move.
My cousin was alive.
My aunt had been my sister.
My mother had identified the body in the coffin.
And someone had just silenced the only person who might have explained why.
Then the technician holding my phone frowned.
“There’s another file attached to Isabel’s video.”
“What kind of file?” Marta asked.
“An audio recording.”
He played it.
At first, there was only static.
Then Sergio’s voice filled the room.
“You don’t have to kill Elena immediately.”
My blood froze.
Rocío answered him.
“The insurance company won’t pay if there’s no body.”
“There will be a body.”
“Whose?”
Sergio laughed softly.
“We already buried one woman under the wrong name.”
A chair moved.
Then a third person spoke.
A woman whose voice I recognized.
Not Isabel.
Not Rocío.
It was a voice I had heard every night of my childhood.
A voice that had comforted me after nightmares.
A voice that had told me family secrets should remain buried.
My mother’s voice.
Impossible.
My mother had been dead for seven years.
Yet on the recording, she said clearly:
“This time, make sure Elena’s coffin stays closed.”……………….
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 4…
