# CHAPTER 1 — COUNT TO TEN
Emma pressed the orange end of the EpiPen against Alejandro Moretti’s thigh.
A sharp click broke the silence.
Alejandro’s body jerked once beneath her small hands.
“One… two… three…”
Emma counted the way her mother had taught her.
Her voice was quiet but steady.
“Four… five… six…”
Alejandro’s eyes remained open, but they stared through her as though he could see something beyond the ceiling.
“Seven… eight… nine… ten.”
Emma pulled the injector away.
For several terrifying seconds, nothing changed.
Then Alejandro dragged in a thin, painful breath.
It sounded like air being pulled through a cracked door.
Emma leaned closer.
“Breathe again,” she whispered.
His chest moved.
Another breath entered.
Then another.
Still weak.
Still uneven.
But real.
Emma placed one hand on his shoulder and looked toward the open study door.
“Help!”
Her tiny voice disappeared into the enormous hallway.
She tried again.
“Somebody help him!”
No one answered.
Emma ran to the wall beside the fireplace and pulled the brass emergency cord she had seen a housekeeper use during a kitchen fire drill.
A bell began ringing throughout the mansion.
Doors opened.
Footsteps thundered across the second floor.
Bruno DeLuca entered first with a handgun raised. The head of Moretti security was built like a wall, with silver beginning to show in his black hair.
He stopped when he saw Alejandro on the rug.
Then he saw Emma kneeling beside him.
“What happened?”
“He couldn’t breathe,” Emma said.
Bruno looked at the injector in her hand.
Within seconds, guards filled the doorway.
Dr. Samuel Reed rushed through them carrying a medical case. He dropped beside Alejandro and checked his throat, pulse, and breathing.
“Anaphylaxis,” Reed said. “Someone call an ambulance.”
Mara Carter pushed past two guards.
Her face turned white when she saw her daughter beside the shattered wineglass.
“Emma!”
She pulled the girl into her arms.
“What did you do?”
“He needed my medicine.”
Mara stared at the empty EpiPen.
Her daughter’s final emergency injector.
The one Mara had spent three weeks trying to replace because their insurance company had refused to approve another pack.
Alejandro coughed.
The room went completely silent.
His fingers closed around Dr. Reed’s sleeve.
“Wine,” Alejandro rasped.
Reed leaned closer.
“What about the wine?”
Alejandro’s eyes moved toward the stain spreading across the rug.
His next words were barely audible.
“Someone put something in it.”
Bruno immediately turned toward the guards.
“Seal every gate. No one leaves.”
Mara held Emma tighter.
One of the guards quietly drew his weapon and looked directly at her.
Alejandro noticed.
Even while struggling to breathe, he understood what would happen next.
The maid would be blamed.
The child would become a witness.
And whoever had poisoned him would disappear while everyone looked in the wrong direction.
Alejandro forced himself onto one elbow.
“No one touches them.”
Bruno looked back at him.
Alejandro’s lips were still dark, but his stare had regained its familiar coldness.
“Lock the entire house,” he ordered. “The person who tried to kill me is still inside.”
From somewhere behind the bookshelves came a nearly silent mechanical click.
No one heard it.
May you like
Except Emma.
And when she turned toward the sound, she saw a tiny glass lens staring back at her from the darkness.
