Chapter 6 - The Epiphany of Terror
Álvaro felt the room spin around him.
The bright stage lights blurred into streaks of yellow and white. His ears rang with a high-pitched whine that drowned out the roaring applause of the auditorium. Serrano. The last name hit him like a physical bludgeon. It wasn't just a common coincidence. Those boys—the ones he had dismissed as street kids, the ones he had insulted in the lobby, the ones he had abandoned thirteen years ago in a tiny, roach-infested apartment while he fled to marry into money—were his flesh and blood.
He turned his head slowly, his neck stiff, and looked back toward the cheap seats in the very last row.
Lucía was standing there.
She wasn't smiling. She wasn't crying. She was simply looking down at him with an expression of cold, vindictive pity that cut straight through his expensive suit and straight to his cowardly soul.
You idiot, her eyes seemed to say. You threw away kings while you polished a pawn.
Beside him, Verónica was still clapping blindly, oblivious to the earthquake shaking her husband's foundation. "Did you hear that, Álvaro? Serrano! What an odd coincidence, another family with the exact same—"
"Shut up," Álvaro choked out, his voice a harsh, strangled whisper.
Verónica stopped clapping, her hands hovering in mid-air, her mouth dropping open in genuine shock. "Excuse me?"
Álvaro didn't answer her. He stood up abruptly, knocking his leather portfolio onto the floor, his eyes darting frantically back to the stage.
Marcos and Mateo stood side by side under the golden glow of the spotlight. Dr. Vance handed them the massive, crystal-engraved rotating trophy, a heavy piece of art that required both boys to hold it together. The cameras zoomed in, projecting their faces onto the giant LED screens flanking the stage.
Up close, on a thirty-foot screen, the resemblance was undeniable. It was a mirror image of Álvaro’s own face from twenty years ago—before ambition turned him into a parasite, before wealth rotted his integrity.
Hugo, still holding his special mention plaque, stared at the two boys standing in the center of the stage, then looked down at his own father. The hero worship in Hugo’s eyes fractured, replaced by a cold, searing confusion.
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"Dad," Hugo whispered, his voice trembling as he stepped back. "Who are they?"
Álvaro couldn't breathe. He backed away from his seat, stumbling against the armrest, his carefully constructed life of lies beginning to unravel like a cheap sweater caught on a nail.
