Chapter 1 - The Station Attack
The first thing Sofia Reyes heard was the ticket gate alarm.
The second was her sister screaming her name.
“Sofia!”
She turned with Mateo pressed against her chest, and for one frozen second, the entire station seemed to go silent.
Vanessa was running toward her.
Not walking fast. Not waving from across the concourse. Running.
Her burgundy coat flew open behind her as she shoved through the restricted boarding barrier, nearly knocking a station employee sideways. The alarm shrieked again. Travelers turned. A man dragging a silver suitcase stopped in the middle of the walkway.
“Ma’am!” the employee yelled. “You need to stop!”
Vanessa didn’t even look at him.
Her eyes were locked on Mateo.
Sofia’s stomach dropped.
Marcus had been standing beside the stroller, checking their tickets on his phone. The moment he saw Vanessa, he moved.
“What the hell?”
“Give him to me!” Vanessa screamed.
Mateo startled at the noise and began crying.
Sofia instinctively stepped backward.
“Vanessa, stop.”
But Vanessa kept coming.
Three months earlier, Sofia might have tried to reason with her.
Six months earlier, she might have asked what was wrong.
A year earlier, she probably would have opened her arms and hugged her older sister.
Now she only tightened her grip around her son.
“Don't come any closer.”
Vanessa reached them.
Her hand shot toward Mateo’s blanket.
Sofia twisted away just as Vanessa grabbed the edge of the blue knit fabric.
“Give him to me!”
“No!”
Mateo screamed.
Sofia felt the blanket pull taut between them, Vanessa yanking one way while Sofia tried to shield her son with her body.
“Let go!” Sofia yelled.
Marcus slammed his phone into his pocket and stepped between the sisters.
“Vanessa, get your hands off my son.”
“He’s not safe with her!”
Vanessa reached around him.
Marcus blocked her.
He didn’t hit her. Didn’t shove her to the ground. He simply planted himself between Vanessa and Sofia like a wall.
“Back up.”
“You did this!” Vanessa shouted at him. “You turned her against me.”
People were moving away now.
A suitcase toppled over.
Someone shouted for security.
Mateo’s cries became breathless little screams against Sofia’s shoulder, and Sofia could barely hear anything else.
Vanessa tried again.
She darted around Marcus and reached directly for Mateo.
That was when two uniformed transit officers appeared from the opposite side of the concourse.
“Step away from the baby!”
Vanessa froze.
Only for a second.
Then she lunged.
Both officers grabbed her.
“No!” Vanessa screamed.
One caught her around the upper arms while the other pulled her backward.
“Stop resisting!”
“He belongs with me!”
Sofia stopped breathing.
Vanessa twisted against them.
“He’s my family! She’s taking him away from me!”
Travelers stared.
A woman near the boarding area covered her mouth.
Someone was filming.
Sofia could feel Mateo’s tiny fingers tangled in her hair.
Marcus came straight to her.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mateo?”
“He’s okay. I think. I think he’s okay.”
Her voice sounded strange even to herself.
An officer forced Vanessa several more feet away.
Vanessa was still shouting.
“Sofia! Tell them! Tell them who I am!”
Sofia looked at her.
Her sister.
The woman who had held Sofia’s hand at their mother’s funeral.
The woman who had driven six hours overnight when Sofia was nineteen and stranded with a broken-down car.
The woman who once knew every secret Sofia had.
And now two officers were holding her near a ticket gate because she had tried to rip Sofia’s baby from her arms.
“You’re hurting me!” Vanessa shouted.
“Stop fighting us.”
“I’m his aunt!”
“That doesn’t give you the right to grab him.”
“You don’t understand!”
Sofia suddenly realized she was crying.
Not loudly.
Tears were simply running down her face.
Marcus placed one hand behind her neck.
“Look at me.”
She couldn’t.
She was staring at Vanessa.
Something about her sister’s expression frightened her more than the struggle itself.
Vanessa didn’t look ashamed.
She didn’t look confused.
She looked furious that she had failed.
A station supervisor approached with another officer.
“What happened?”
“She came through the restricted gate without authorization,” the employee said. “Wouldn’t stop.”
The officer looked at Sofia.
“Ma’am, is that your child?”
“Yes.”
“Your relationship to that woman?”
Sofia swallowed.
“My sister.”
“Has anything like this happened before?”
Marcus answered before Sofia could.
“Yes.”
Sofia looked at him.
His jaw was tight.
The officer noticed.
“What do you mean by that?”
Marcus took a breath.
“She’s been told not to contact us.”
Vanessa heard him.
“That’s because you poisoned her against me!”
“Vanessa!” Sofia yelled.
Everything stopped inside her.
The shaking. The confusion. The part of her that still wanted to soften things because Vanessa was family.
“Stop.”
Vanessa stared at her.
Sofia shifted Mateo higher against her shoulder.
“He is my son.”
Vanessa’s face changed.
“You know I love him.”
“You tried to take him out of my arms.”
“I was trying to protect him.”
“From what?”
Vanessa looked at Marcus.
“Him.”
Marcus laughed once, without humor.
“Of course.”
The police separated them completely.
Vanessa was moved toward a station office.
Sofia and Marcus were escorted to another room near the platform entrance.
The officer who walked with them was named Officer Brennan. He was in his forties, calm enough that Sofia found herself concentrating on his voice.
“Do you need medical attention?”
“No.”
“The baby?”
“I think he’s fine.”
“We can have paramedics check him.”
“Yes. Please.”
They sat inside a small employee room while a medic examined Mateo.
He had no visible injuries.
That should have made Sofia feel better.
It didn’t.
Her arms refused to stop shaking.
Marcus crouched in front of her.
“You okay?”
“No.”
He nodded.
“Me neither.”
For once, he didn’t try to tell her everything was going to be fine.
Sofia appreciated that.
Officer Brennan sat across from them with a small notebook.
“I need you to walk me through what happened before today.”
Sofia glanced at Marcus.
He looked exhausted already.
“She’s my older sister,” Sofia said. “Vanessa. She used to be close to us.”
“How close?”
“Very.”
“When did things change?”
“After Mateo was born.”
Officer Brennan wrote something.
“Any threats?”
Sofia hesitated.
Marcus looked at her.
There it was again.
The hesitation he hated.
The reflex she had spent months pretending wasn’t dangerous.
“She said things.”
“What things?”
“That I was keeping Mateo from his real family.”
“She also told Sofia she'd regret shutting her out,” Marcus added.
“Marcus.”
“No.” He turned toward her. “We’re done minimizing this.”
His voice wasn’t angry at her.
That somehow made it worse.
Officer Brennan looked between them.
“Did she ever attempt to take the baby before?”
Sofia’s mouth went dry.
“There was an incident.”
Marcus stood.
“She disappeared with him.”
Brennan looked up sharply.
Sofia closed her eyes.
“It wasn’t exactly—”
“She took our son without permission and disappeared for almost two hours.”
The officer stopped writing.
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“Was it reported?”
Silence.
Marcus stared at the floor.
Sofia whispered, “No.”
Brennan leaned back.
“Why not?”
Because she was my sister.
Because she cried.
Because she said I was humiliating her.
Because my whole family told me Vanessa had been through enough.
Because I wanted so badly to believe it wouldn’t happen again.
Sofia said none of those things.
“I thought I could handle it.”
Officer Brennan studied her for a moment.
Then he softened slightly.
“All right. We’ll come back to that.”
Another officer opened the door and whispered something to him.
Brennan stepped into the hallway.
Marcus sat beside Sofia.
For several minutes, neither spoke.
Mateo finally stopped crying and rested his cheek against Sofia’s chest.
His eyelashes were still wet.
Sofia kissed his forehead.
“I should’ve called the police that night.”
Marcus rubbed both hands over his face.
“We’re not doing that right now.”
“You told me.”
“Sofia.”
“You told me she wasn’t okay.”
“I also understood why you didn’t want to believe it.”
She looked at him.
“Did you?”
He took too long to answer.
Before he could, Brennan returned.
His expression had changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
He sat down but didn’t immediately open his notebook.
“Sofia, I need to ask you something very specific.”
“All right.”
“Did you tell Vanessa you were traveling today?”
“No.”
“Did Marcus?”
“No,” Marcus said immediately.
“Did you post anything online?”
“No.”
“Friends? Relatives?”
Sofia shook her head.
“We barely told anyone. We were visiting Marcus’s brother for a few days. That’s it.”
Brennan glanced toward the hallway.
“What about the train number?”
“No.”
“Departure time?”
“No.”
“Which entrance you planned to use?”
Sofia frowned.
“No.”
“Your boarding gate?”
“No.”
Brennan was silent.
A cold pressure spread through Sofia’s chest.
“Why are you asking me that?”
He leaned forward.
“Because according to station staff, your sister didn’t just show up here looking for you.”
Sofia felt Marcus straighten beside her.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Brennan looked directly at Sofia.
“She arrived almost an hour before you.”
Sofia stared at him.
“She knew which concourse you would enter.”
Her fingers tightened around Mateo.
“She knew your train.”
Brennan paused.
“And she was waiting near your exact boarding gate before you ever walked into this station.”
Sofia could hear her own heartbeat.
Marcus spoke quietly.
“Who told her?”
Brennan closed his notebook.
“That’s what we need to find out.”
And for the first time since Vanessa had charged through the gate, Sofia understood something worse than the attack itself.
Her sister hadn’t found them by accident.
May you like
She had hunted them down.
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