Chapter 5 - The Camera That Blinked.
Damian dragged Victor behind the stone fireplace as two more shots punched through the dining room wall.
The other guards returned fire toward the dark hallway.
"Victor, look at me."
Victor pressed one hand beneath his ribs.
"Vest caught most of it."
Blood seeped between his fingers anyway.
Damian tore open the shirt and found the bullet had cut along Victor's side after striking the armor plate.
Painful, but not immediately fatal.
"Shooter moving east," a guard shouted.
Damian rose before Victor grabbed his sleeve.
"Don't chase."
"He just shot you."
"That's why he wants you outside."
Damian stopped.
Victor had spent twelve years teaching him that anger made predictable men.
He hated being reminded while Victor was bleeding.
Mara's voice came over the earpiece.
"The laptop is transmitting again."
Damian looked at the screen.
The fake video had vanished.
In its place was a security map of the mansion with one red dot pulsing beneath the library.
The hidden chamber.
"Harper."
Damian ran.
By the time he reached the mansion, the library was empty.
The physician lay unconscious in the hallway.
Ella's blanket was on the floor.
Damian felt something inside him rupture.
"Where are they?"
Mara rushed in from the security wing.
"The library camera looped for ninety-two seconds."
"Find them."
"I'm trying."
Damian seized the edge of the desk so hard his knuckles whitened.
Then a small sound came from beneath it.
"Mr. Damian?"
Ella crawled out from behind a hidden knee panel, shaking.
He dropped beside her.
"Where's your mother?"
"A man came in."
"Did you see him?"
She nodded.
"Mommy pushed me under here and told me not to make a sound."
Damian checked her arms and face for injuries.
"What did he look like?"
Ella stared toward the doorway.
"Like Uncle Lucas."
Lucas arrived seconds later with two guards behind him.
Ella recoiled.
Damian stepped between them.
Lucas stopped dead.
"Why is she looking at me like that?"
Damian's voice was quiet.
"Because she says you took Harper."
Lucas's face drained.
"I was upstairs with the lockdown team."
Mara lifted her tablet.
"He was."
She showed Damian a continuous body-camera stream from the two guards assigned to Lucas.
Lucas had never left the east hall.
Ella began crying again.
"It was his face."
Damian looked toward the guesthouse where they had just seen a synthetic video of himself.
The pattern became clear.
"Not his face," he said.
"A mask."
Mara shook her head.
"More likely real-time projection or a deepfake display shell."
Lucas stared at her.
"You're telling me someone walked through the house wearing my face?"
"I'm telling you someone wants every witness to accuse a member of this family."
A guard shouted from the corridor.
They found Harper twenty yards away in the old music room.
She was conscious but collapsed beside a smashed wall mirror.
Damian knelt next to her.
"Where did he go?"
Harper pointed toward the mirror.
Behind the broken glass was a narrow black gap.
A passage Damian had never known existed.
Mara shone a flashlight inside.
Dust covered the floor except for one fresh set of shoe prints.
Harper whispered, "He knew the walls better than I do."
Damian looked at Victor, who had returned despite the bandage around his ribs.
Victor's expression was grim.
"Only one man ever knew every original service passage."
"Who?"
May you like
Victor hesitated.
"Your father.
