# CHAPTER 5 — THE EYE IN THE BOOKSHELF
The convoy returned to the mansion without stopping at the hospital.
Alejandro met Mara and Emma in the entrance hall.
Mara stepped out of the vehicle and walked directly toward him.
Then she slapped him.
Every guard froze.
Bruno slowly lowered his hand from his weapon.
Alejandro’s face turned slightly from the impact.
Mara’s voice shook with anger.
“My daughter gave you the last medicine that could save her life. Your people promised to replace it, and someone tried to attack her on the road.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Mara’s eyes filled, but she refused to cry.
“You have armored cars. Doctors. Guards. Private airplanes. I spent the morning arguing with an insurance company because they said my daughter’s life-saving medication was not medically necessary.”
Alejandro looked at Emma.
The child was clutching her stuffed rabbit.
“Dr. Reed is bringing medicine here,” he said. “He will not use the public road.”
“And after that?”
“You and Emma stay under my protection.”
“I don’t want your protection.”
“Neither did the driver on the bridge.”
Mara stared at him.
Alejandro lowered his voice.
“Someone knew Emma would be in that vehicle. Until I know how, the safest place is inside a house I have already locked.”
“That house is where you were poisoned.”
Before Alejandro could answer, Emma pointed toward the second floor.
“The little eye is still watching.”
Everyone looked at her.
“What eye?” Mara asked.
Emma led them back into the study.
She walked around the wine stain and stopped beside a bookshelf.
A carved bronze falcon sat between two old books.
Its eyes appeared to be made from black stone.
Emma pointed at the left one.
“It clicked.”
Bruno removed the falcon.
A thin wire ran from its base into a hole behind the shelf.
Gabriel Kane, the estate’s technology specialist, was brought upstairs.
He examined the object for nearly ten minutes.
“It’s a camera,” he finally said.
Bruno frowned.
“There are no cameras in this room.”
“Not on our system.”
Gabriel removed the falcon’s left eye.
Behind the dark lens was a tiny analog recording device.
“This equipment is old. At least fifteen years.”
Alejandro recognized the falcon.
It had once stood in Kiara’s nursery.
His wife had installed hidden cameras after receiving threats during her pregnancy.
After Kiara’s birth, most of them had been removed.
The falcon had eventually been placed in the study and forgotten.
“Does it still record?” Alejandro asked.
Gabriel traced the wire behind the shelves.
“It runs to an isolated battery unit inside the wall. If the storage device survived, it may have recorded everything.”
“Everything?” Bruno asked.
Gabriel nodded.
“Including whoever touched the wine.”
The bookshelf was moved.
Behind it, they found a small metal box buried in the wall.
Gabriel unlocked it.
The storage drive was missing.
Only a cut cable remained.
Someone already knew about the forgotten camera.
Emma leaned down and picked something up from beneath the shelf.
A small black memory card rested between her fingers.
“It fell out when the bird moved,” she said.
Gabriel stared at it.
Alejandro did not.
He was looking at the thin line of fresh blood on Emma’s fingertip.
A shard of glass had cut her.
May you like
Dr. Reed had not yet returned with her medication.
And Emma’s skin was beginning to turn red.
