Chapter 11 - Blood on White CottonThe mansion erupted.
Guards shouted. Glass shattered. Valeria screamed Mateo’s name from inside the library. Nicolás pressed Sofía beneath him against the courtyard stones, his body shielding hers as another shot punched into the fountain.
“Stay down,” he ordered.
Sofía’s ears rang.
His shoulder was warm against her cheek.
Too warm.
She touched his sleeve.
Her fingers came away dark.
“You’re hit.”
“Not now.”
“That is not how bleeding works.”
He almost laughed, but a third shot struck the tree behind them.
Nicolás pulled her toward the side entrance while guards returned fire into the darkness beyond the estate wall. The shots stopped as quickly as they had begun.
Inside, chaos waited.
Valeria clutched Mateo, who was crying from fear but not pain. That distinction mattered so much Sofía nearly wept.
Leonor stood behind them, pale but steady, holding a cotton blanket like a shield.
“Nicolás,” Valeria cried.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Sofía snapped, “He is not.”
She dragged him into the clean room because it was the only space she trusted. His jacket came off. Blood spread across his upper arm where stone or bullet fragment had torn through flesh.
“It grazed me,” he said.
“Men say that when they want to faint later with dignity.”
Valeria blinked.
Leonor stared.
Even Nicolás looked startled.
Then Sofía pressed clean gauze to the wound and he hissed.
“Hold still.”
“I have doctors.”
“And yet here I am.”
For ten minutes, the world narrowed to bleeding, pressure, antiseptic, bandage. Sofía worked with the speed and skill of someone who had done more with less in worse rooms.
Nicolás watched her face.
She was frightened.
Not of him.
For him.
That realization struck deeper than the wound.
When it was done, she tied the bandage and stepped back.
“You need stitches.”
“Later.”
“Now.”
“Sofía—”
She leaned closer.
“Your son needs you alive and conscious. Do not make masculine stupidity another emergency in this house.”
Valeria made a sound that might have been a laugh.
Leonor sat down abruptly.
Nicolás held Sofía’s gaze.
Then he nodded.
“Fine.”
Esteban entered with news.
“The shooter escaped. But we found a casing and a phone near the south wall.”
Nicolás stood.
Sofía blocked him.
“No.”
Everyone froze.
He looked down at her.
“No?”
“You just agreed to stitches.”
“My men can—”
“Your men can bring the phone here.”
He stared.
She stared back.
Mateo hiccupped in Valeria’s arms.
Nicolás sat back down.
Esteban wisely disappeared to fetch the evidence.
Leonor watched Sofía with an unreadable expression.
“You are either very brave,” she said, “or very foolish.”
Sofía did not look away from Nicolás’s bandage.
“Most nurses are both.”
The phone belonged to a hired shooter with no direct connection to Rafael. But inside it was one message not yet deleted.
The nurse first. The father only if necessary.
Valeria began to shake.
Nicolás read the message twice.
Then he handed the phone to his head of security.
“Trace it.”
The security chief nodded.
Minutes later, the source came back.
A disposable device purchased near Santa Aurelia Pediatric Institute.
Bianca.
No one said her name.
They did not need to.
Sofía felt the room’s fear sharpen into focus.
“She wants me dead because I can testify,” she said.
Nicolás’s voice was low. “She wants you dead because Mateo trusts you.”
That was worse.
Valeria looked at Mateo.
The baby had stopped crying. He was reaching toward Sofía with one small hand.
Sofía hesitated.
Then she took him.
He settled instantly against her.
Valeria’s pain flickered, but this time she breathed through it.
“He feels safe with you,” she said. “That means we need you.”
Leonor looked at her daughter-in-law.
Something like respect passed through her face.
Later, after a doctor stitched Nicolás’s arm, he found Sofía in the hallway outside Mateo’s room.
“You should sleep,” he said.
“You first.”
“I won’t.”
“Then neither will I.”
He leaned against the wall.
“You could leave. I would arrange protection.”
She looked through the glass at Mateo sleeping.
“Rafael’s note said to make me leave. So no.”
“Sofía.”
“I know what I’m risking.”
His voice dropped.
“I do not.”
She turned.
He swallowed the words like they were dangerous.
“I don’t know what I am risking if something happens to you.”
The hallway became very quiet.
Sofía’s heart moved before her mind could stop it.
“Nicolás…”
He reached out slowly, giving her time to step away.
She didn’t.
His fingers brushed hers.
Not possession.
Not command.
A question.
Before either could answer it, Mateo cried from inside the room.
They separated at once.
May you like
But the question remained.
And neither of them slept.
