Chapter 1 - The Six Missing Minutes

For several seconds after the security footage skipped from 8:11 to 8:18, nobody in the dining room spoke. Sophia stood beside her mother clutching the teddy bear against her chest, while the pill that had almost gone into my mouth remained on the white tablecloth beside my espresso. Victor had spent twenty-five years teaching everyone in my house that nothing happened without his knowledge, yet someone had just erased nearly seven minutes from a camera system he personally supervised.

I told Gabriel to lock down the estate quietly. Nobody was to leave, nobody was to access the security room, and most importantly, Victor was not to know yet that I suspected him. Gabriel hesitated when I gave that final instruction because Victor had been his mentor long before I promoted him to head of security, but he obeyed without asking questions.

Elena immediately tried to take Sophia upstairs, but the little girl tugged at her sleeve and whispered that she had more pictures. That caught my attention. I asked what she meant, and Sophia reached into a small cloth bag her mother used to carry crayons during long shifts at the house.

There were twelve drawings.

At first glance, they looked exactly like what you would expect from a five-year-old spending too many hours inside an enormous house while her mother worked. Tables. Doors. Staff members. My black car. The kitchen clock. A badly drawn dog we did not own.

Then I began noticing the times.

7:46.

8:12.

8:15.

9:03.

Sophia liked clocks because Elena had been teaching her numbers. Whenever the large kitchen clock chimed or clicked loudly, Sophia sometimes copied the time into her drawings.

One picture showed Victor standing beside the medication cabinet. Another showed a man I recognized as Peter Sloan, one of the evening porters, carrying a small paper bag. A third showed two prescription bottles side by side.

One had many small circles inside.

The other had fewer large ones.

I looked at Sophia. “Did you see Mr. Victor put something in my bottle?”

She frowned with the seriousness only children can manage. “He poured the little ones out, then put the big ones in. Some fell.”

Elena covered her mouth.

“Where?”

Sophia pointed toward the pantry.

Gabriel brought gloves and searched beneath the shelving. Less than three minutes later, he found a white tablet lodged behind a wooden baseboard.

It looked identical to the one on my table.

I ordered both tablets sealed separately and sent with one of my doctors for immediate laboratory analysis. Then I told Gabriel to recover the raw security archive instead of relying on the edited household system.

Victor entered the dining room before Gabriel could leave.

His timing had always been excellent.

“Alessandro, is something wrong?”

Twenty-five years of friendship trained me to recognize almost every version of his face. Concerned Victor. Angry Victor. Amused Victor. The Victor who sat beside my hospital bed after my arrhythmia and told me I was too stubborn to die.

That night I discovered another version.

The man calculating how much I knew.

I lifted the prescription bottle casually. “Sophia thinks my pills sound different.”

Victor smiled and looked toward the child. “Children notice strange things.”

“Apparently.”

He waited.

I gave him nothing else.

Then I told Elena to take Sophia upstairs and asked Victor whether he remembered changing my prescription refill the previous month. He answered smoothly that the pharmacy delivered a new manufacturer, which sometimes changed the shape or density of tablets.

That was plausible.

Too plausible.

I asked why six minutes were missing from the east corridor camera.

For the first time, Victor took half a second too long.

“Maintenance problem?”

“That was my first thought.”

I watched relief begin behind his eyes.

Then I smiled.

Victor smiled back.

We had played cards together for twenty-five years. He knew my bluffing habits, and I knew his.

Neither of us believed the conversation.

He excused himself, saying he would personally inspect the security system.

I let him go.

The moment he disappeared through the doors, I called Gabriel.

“Do not let him reach the control room.”

Gabriel’s voice dropped. “Understood.”

Ten minutes later, Victor discovered his access card no longer opened the security wing.

He called me.

I did not answer.

At 11:37 p.m., my doctor called with preliminary results.

The pill Sophia stopped me from taking was not my heart medication.

It contained a powerful sedative combined with a drug capable of dangerously lowering blood pressure and disrupting heart rhythm. For a healthy man, the dose could cause collapse. For someone with my cardiac history, repeated exposure could easily resemble a sudden fatal arrhythmia.

My doctor asked whether I had experienced unexplained dizziness recently.

I had.

For almost three months.

Victor had blamed my medication.

He suggested I work less.

He reminded everyone that my heart was becoming weaker.

Three months.

The same period Sophia’s drawings covered.

I looked through them again.

In one corner of the earliest picture, dated almost exactly twelve weeks before that night, Sophia had drawn Victor standing beside my coffee cup.

Beside him was another man.

Not Peter the porter.

Gabriel.

My hand tightened around the paper.

Either the betrayal was larger than I imagined—

or someone had been very carefully making sure I would suspect the wrong person next.