Chapter 4 - When the Lights Went Out
Darkness swallowed the room so completely that Adeline heard Nico before she saw anything. The mattress shifted. A sharp breath. The scrape of metal against hardwood. “Stay down,” she said. A shadow moved near the bed.
Adeline hit the emergency alarm again, but the panel was dead. Whoever had cut the lights had also interrupted the local security circuit. She backed toward the wall, one hand searching for the switch she already knew would not work, the other raised in front of her. She could hear the intruder’s breathing now—fast, controlled, close.
Then a crash exploded from the far side of the room. Nico had thrown the bedside lamp. It struck the wall and shattered, and in the same instant the intruder bolted toward the sitting room. Adeline lunged after the movement, catching only the sleeve of a dark jacket before the fabric tore from her fingers. The person slammed into a table, swore under their breath, and vanished through the service door that connected Nico’s suite to a narrow staff corridor.
Adeline froze. The voice had been low and distorted by panic, but not deep enough to tell her anything useful. Behind her, Nico cursed. She turned. Moonlight from the windows gave the room a silver outline. Nico was half out of bed, one leg tangled in the blanket, his upper body braced against the mattress with both hands. In trying to help, he had nearly fallen.
“Don’t move.” “I’m fine.” “You are six inches from the floor.” “I said I’m fine.” “And I’m saying don’t make me prove you wrong.” Adeline reached him, secured the transfer belt around his waist, and guided him back onto the mattress. Her hands were steady because training had made them steady. Her heart was not.
Footsteps thundered in the corridor. Backup power flickered on, first dim amber emergency lights, then full illumination. Three members of estate security entered with weapons drawn, followed by Mateo Ruiz, the head of Nico’s security detail. Mateo was in his forties, broad-shouldered, gray at the temples, and had worked for the Alfieri family since Nico was a teenager. His face changed when he saw the broken lamp and the open service door.
“What happened?” “Someone was in here,” Adeline said. “They had a syringe.” Mateo’s eyes went to Nico. “Seal the property,” Nico ordered. “Nobody leaves.” Within ten minutes, the estate looked less like a wedding venue and more like a fortress preparing for siege. Gates locked. Staff were gathered in the kitchen wing. Security teams searched the grounds, garages, service corridors, and guest suites. Camera feeds were pulled. Camille arrived in a silk robe with Dominic behind her, both demanding explanations.
Adeline stood near the fireplace with the torn scrap of black fabric she had managed to pull free from the intruder’s sleeve. Camille stared at it. “You expect us to believe someone broke into Nico’s room dressed like a burglar?”
“I expect you to believe I saw someone holding a syringe beside his bed.” “This is becoming theatrical.” Nico looked at her. “Someone drugged my soup.” “You don’t know that.” “Someone entered my room at two in the morning.”
“You don’t know who.” “Someone cut power to the security circuit.” Camille’s mouth tightened. “Then perhaps your security isn’t as impressive as everyone says.” Mateo turned from the monitor station. “The outage wasn’t external. A manual override was activated in the east service panel.”
Dominic frowned. “Who has access?” “Senior household staff, maintenance, myself, Nico, and family access codes.” The last words changed the room. Camille crossed her arms. “How convenient.” Nico’s gaze settled on Dominic. Dominic noticed. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.” “You didn’t have to.” Adeline looked from one brother to the other and understood that suspicion had already done what she feared. It no longer needed evidence to grow. Mateo returned to the security screen. “There’s more. The camera in the east service corridor looped thirty-two seconds of old footage at 2:15.”
Nico’s face hardened. “Can that happen accidentally?” “No.” Camille laughed once, too loudly. “This is insane.” Aunt Teresa appeared in the doorway wearing a dark robe and slippers, her white hair loose over one shoulder. She surveyed the room, the guards, the broken lamp, and the panic no one wanted to name.
“Insane things,” she said, “are often just organized things no one has understood yet.” By dawn, the intruder had not been found. One kitchen assistant was missing, but his apartment in the staff building was untouched and his car remained in the garage. A groundskeeper admitted loaning his access card to a maintenance supervisor earlier that afternoon. The supervisor denied using it at night. The security system logs showed a family-level code had opened the service panel, but the code had been manually deleted from the event history within minutes.
There were too many clues and none of them pointed cleanly anywhere. Adeline sat at the breakfast table in Nico’s suite, exhausted, while he examined the torn cloth. “It’s tailored,” he said. She looked up. “You can tell that from a two-inch strip?”
“My mother made me wear custom suits from the time I was twelve. You learn things against your will.” The fabric was fine wool, not the cheap synthetic material worn by estate maintenance staff. Nico rubbed it between his fingers. “Whoever came in wasn’t wearing a uniform.”
“Or wanted us to think they weren’t.” “You’ve become suspicious.” “You’re contagious.” A tired smile appeared and disappeared. Adeline examined the floor near the bedside table where the intruder had stood. In the bright morning light, something glinted beneath the edge of the rug.
She knelt and picked up a small silver button. Nico reached for it. Adeline stopped him. “Don’t touch.” The button was engraved with a tiny crest: a falcon inside a circle. She had seen it before.
Not on Nico. Not on Dominic. On the cuff of the private physician Camille’s family had brought to the estate two weeks earlier for a “wellness consultation” Nico had refused to take seriously. Dr. Warren Vale.
Nico recognized the crest immediately. “Camille’s doctor,” he said. “Her father’s doctor,” Adeline corrected. Nico called Mateo. By nine, Mateo had confirmed that Dr. Vale had entered the estate at 6:42 the previous evening and had not been logged out. His car was still parked near the west guest garage. His assigned guest room was empty.
At 9:17, security found him. He was not hiding. He was unconscious in a linen storage room, wrists tied loosely with a silk curtain cord and a bruise on the side of his head. An ambulance took him to the hospital, where he woke an hour later confused, frightened, and insisting someone had attacked him from behind after Camille asked him to check a headache in the west wing.
Camille denied summoning him. “That’s impossible,” she said when Mateo relayed the statement. “I never spoke to him.” Dr. Vale’s phone showed a message from her number at 1:46 a.m. COME TO THE WEST CORRIDOR. NICO IS HAVING SPASMS. BRING THE INJECTABLE KIT. DO NOT WAKE THE NURSE.
Camille stared at the screen as if it were poisonous. “I did not send that.” Nico’s eyes remained on her. “Then someone is using your phone.” “My phone was beside me all night.” “Was it?”
She looked toward Dominic, not Nico. That tiny movement was enough. Dominic saw it too. “What?” he said. Camille’s face had gone pale. “Nothing.” “Camille.” “Stop interrogating me.” Dominic stepped closer. “Why did you look at me?”
She turned away. The room seemed to shrink. Adeline suddenly understood that the conspiracy might be messier than any of them had imagined. Not a single mastermind. Not one clean betrayal. Perhaps multiple people were lying for different reasons, each protecting a secret that had only now begun to overlap.
Nico’s phone rang. It was the laboratory. The sedative found in his soup was the same class of medication as the missing injectable drug, but the concentration was low enough to produce fatigue rather than immediate unconsciousness. If repeated over weeks, it could slow his reflexes, weaken physical performance, and make his rehabilitation appear to fail.
Adeline felt sick. Someone had not been trying to kill Nico. Someone had been trying to keep him disabled. She looked at him. Nico absorbed the meaning with terrifying calm. For eight months, he had blamed his body for betraying him. He had hated his legs, hated the chair, hated the helplessness of needing hands on his shoulders and straps around his waist. Now there was a possibility that at least some of the weakness had been manufactured.
May you like
His eyes changed. The wounded man disappeared. Something older and colder took his place. “They wanted me alive,” he said softly. Adeline nodded. “But not standing.” From the doorway, Aunt Teresa answered before anyone else could. “Then you should stand,” she said. “And let them see what they failed to destroy.”
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