THE HEIRESS OF THE CURSED PORT

The tray felt as heavy as if it were loaded with bricks instead of glasses, and yet that wasn’t what was making my hands shake.

It was Ofelia’s voice, right next to my ear.

“Smile, you idiot. Don’t let anyone notice we brought the dog into the house.”

The dog. Me. How original. She’d been using the same insult on me for as long as I can remember, and she didn’t even bother to change it. You’d think she’d show some creativity after so many years spent hating me.

I smiled anyway. I stretched my lips as I’d been taught through a barrage of lashes and made my way through the crowd dressed in black, dodging elbows, shoulders, and glances that passed right over me as if I were just another piece of furniture in the Arteaga household.

Upstairs, in his coffin, the old boss had been dead for hours, surrounded by flowers that cost more than my entire life. The port had come to mourn him. Or rather, to pretend to mourn him, because half of those long faces were already calculating what they’d get out of it now that the old man was no longer around to bite back.

I hadn’t come to pretend anything. I’d come to pour drinks. That’s why they’d brought me. That’s what I was there for.

“Excuse me,” I said to a guy the size of a wardrobe.

He didn’t move. I went around him to get to the other side, and that’s when I felt it. A hand on my ankle. A tug.

Regina.

She didn’t even look at me, the bitch. She kept her glass raised and her chin lifted toward a little circle of important gentlemen, her perfect smile in place. But she left her foot planted right where it was supposed to be.

I stumbled, the tray slipped from my hands, and the glass shattered against the marble.

Silence. All eyes on me.

“Oh, my God.”—Ofelia, now all sweet, playing to the crowd—“Excuse her. Poor thing, she’s not used to being around people.”

Giggles. The heat rushed to my face, my ears, my throat.

Don’t cry. Not here. Not in front of them.

I got up with a handful of glass shards in my hand and bolted before my voice would break in public. I crossed the hallway, pushed open the first door my hand found, and went downstairs. The cellar staircase swallowed me up in the darkness.

It was cold down there, a stony cold that crept up my spine. The music and the murmur from upstairs sounded distant, muffled. I leaned against a shelf, closed my eyes, and breathed.

And then I heard them. The voices.

They weren’t coming from the staircase. They were coming from the wall. A rusty grate, set into the stone, at the level of my face. Behind it there must have been another room, one of those that big houses hide underground. A man’s voice seeped through the metal, low and calm.

I stood still.

“We’ll wait until the day the will is read,” he said. “Not before. There are too many people tonight. On the day of the reading, only the family and the lawyers will be there. That’s when we’ll catch the heir.”

I recognized one of the voices. Tobias. The man who used to feed me leftovers.

“What if the boy doesn’t show up?” Another voice, hoarser.

“He’ll show up. He has to sign to keep everything. On the highway, as he’s driving out. An accident. A rollover into the ravine. Something no one can question afterward.”

My hand froze against the rock.

They were planning to kill a man. Right there, two meters away from me, as casually as if they were negotiating the price of a shipment.

“What if it goes wrong?” said the hoarse one. “What if the Circle gets involved, what if they don’t let us keep the port?”

“Then we’ll play our other card,” Tobías lowered his voice, and I pressed my ear against the metal. “Don’t forget what we’ve got stashed away in the house. As long as that exists, we can claim the port from anyone.”

“The chosen one.”

“The orphan.” He almost laughed. “The girl who scrubs my pots is the only Ferreira left alive.” The daughter of the true owners of this port—the ones old Arteaga had every last one of them killed. Everyone, except for the little girl. That girl grew up in my house, without even knowing her own name, and when the time is right, I’ll introduce her as what she is: the rightful heir to all of this.

I held my breath.

“If we can’t kill the boy,” Tobias continued, “we’ll use her. The Ferreira heiress is worth more than a hundred bullets. And I’ve got her eating out of my hand, grateful, without knowing she’s sitting atop the entire port.”

The hoarse-voiced man let out a low whistle.

“And she doesn’t know anything?”

“Nothing. She thinks she’s a foundling with no mother. That’s how I raised her. That’s how she serves me.”

My back was pressed against the rock, and I couldn’t feel my legs.

Ferreira. Heiress. The only one still alive. The daughter of the real owners.

They were talking about me.

About me, who slept on a cot next to the kitchen. About me, who was grateful for the leftovers. About me, who had spent my whole life believing I was nobody, that I had no mother, that I’d been lucky a family took me in out of charity.

Charity. It wasn’t charity. It was a business. They raised me like a dog so they could sell me whenever they needed to. My stomach churned, disgust rose in my throat, and I took a step back without thinking.

The shelf creaked.

“What was that?”

I covered my mouth with my hand. Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Let it be a rat, the water, the old house creaking. Anything but me.

“Nothing,” said Tobias, after a silence that felt like a lifetime to me. “This house creaks on its own. But let’s go outside anyway. There are too many walls with ears in here.”

Footsteps. They were coming toward the door.

I bolted out the way I’d come in. I ran up the stairs two at a time, crossed a service hallway, pushed open a door, and found myself outside, in the back, on the side facing the dock. The cold air hit me, and I kept running—down the service stairs, toward the dumpsters—not knowing where I was going, just knowing I had to put metal and shadow between that voice and me.

I have to hide. I have to hide.

I kept repeating it to myself like an idiot as I squeezed between the shipping containers, bumping into the metal, my breath burning my throat. If Tobias finds out I heard him, he’ll kill me. Or worse, he’ll use me. I have to hide, I have to hide, I have to…

And I bumped into something.

Into someone.

A hard chest, two hands that grabbed my arms before I fell. A man. Tall. In the darkness, I could see nothing but his shadow.

“They want to kill him.” The words just came out, in a gasp, panic speaking for me. “They want to kill him—they’re going to kill the heir. And if they don’t succeed, they’ll use the heiress. I have to hide, I have to…”

“Wait.” His voice was deep and tense. “What are you talking about? Who wants to kill whom?”

“The heir. On the highway. An accident.” I was shaking all over. “And if they fail, they’ve got the heiress in reserve—they’re going to use her. I have to…”

His hands squeezed me tighter.

“The heiress?” Something in his voice changed; it grew sharper. “Do you know who the heiress is? Where are they holding her?”

And that’s when I froze.

That’s when I realized what I’d just done.

I was spilling everything to a stranger. On the pier. At night. A man who’d appeared out of nowhere that very night, right there in that house, and who was asking about the heiress in a voice that suddenly didn’t sound worried anymore—it sounded hungry.

I shut my mouth with a snap. My heart was pounding.

“Let me go,” I said.

“Answer me.” He didn’t let go of me. “Where is the heiress?”

“Let me go!”

I rammed my knee between his legs with all my strength.

The man let out a grunt and doubled over, and his grip loosened just enough. I didn’t wait any longer. I yanked myself free and ran, weaving through the dumpsters along the paths I knew by heart, turning one corner, then another, without looking back, without listening to see if he was coming after me, running until my legs gave out and there was nothing left but the sound of water lapping against the pilings.

Alone. I was alone.

I collapsed to my knees, gasping for air. I pressed my hand to my chest to calm my heart, and my fingers touched skin where they shouldn’t have.

The chain was gone. My medallion was gone.

The only thing that had ever been mine in my whole life—the little medallion I never took off, not even to sleep—was no longer hanging around my neck. It had fallen back there, during the run, among the dumpsters. Where he was.

And I couldn’t go back.

I closed my eyes, clenching my empty fist against my chest, and for the first time that night I understood what I’d gotten myself into.

The man who raised me wanted to kill the heir, and he wanted me—the bargaining chip, the Ferreira who didn’t even know she was one. And I, without meaning to, had just told half the secret to a stranger who was asking about the heiress as if she were prey. God, what on earth have I gotten myself into?