He opened his laptop. He plugged in the USB.
The screen flickered and a folder appeared containing a single video file. The date was today. The time: 5:47 PM.
Lucas moved the cursor. His finger trembled slightly on the trackpad. He clicked.
The video opened. The image was grainy, black and white, shot from a high angle in the east hallway. But it was clear.
There was the pedestal. There was the Baccarat vase, gleaming in the hallway light.
And there was Elena.
Lucas leaned towards the screen, holding his breath.
The video played silently, but the truth screamed louder than any thunder.
CHAPTER 2: THE SCREEN DOESN’T LIE
The silence in Lucas Sandoval’s studio was sepulchral, only interrupted by the rhythmic tapping of the rain against the armored windows and the almost imperceptible hum of his laptop’s hard drive.
Lucas stared at the black screen, his index finger hovering over the space bar, hesitating. The small USB drive Don Enrique had given him seemed to vibrate with a dark energy.
“Why would a gardener risk so much?” Lucas wondered. Enrique was a man of few words, loyal to the land and the plants, not to hallway gossip. If he had gone in there, soaked and shivering, it was because what was on that drive was serious.
Lucas exhaled the air he didn’t know he was holding and pressed the key.
The video came to life.
The image, captured by the hidden security camera Enrique had installed, showed the East Corridor in a grainy grayscale. The time in the upper right corner read 5:47 PM .
The scene was empty at first. The hallway looked immaculate, its marble floors gleaming in the chandelier light. In the center of the frame, atop a carved wooden pedestal, rested the Baccarat vase.
Even in the low-quality recording, the crystal caught the light with an elegance that reminded Lucas of his mother. She loved that object. She said it was the heart of the house.
Suddenly, a figure entered the picture from the left.
It was Elena.
Lucas leaned forward, squinting. Elena wasn’t walking with her usual measured and respectful gait. She was walking quickly, almost running, with a cell phone pressed to her ear. She looked agitated, gesturing with her free hand, clearly immersed in a heated argument.
“Who were you talking to, Elena?” Lucas murmured, feeling a strange chill in his stomach.
On screen, Elena spun around sharply, probably to emphasize something she was saying. It was a careless, arrogant movement. Her right elbow shot out.
The impact was clear.
Elena’s elbow struck the vase. The glass teetered on the pedestal for an agonizing second—a second in which it seemed that gravity might spare it—and then it fell.
The video had no sound, but Lucas could hear the crash in his mind. The sound of three generations of history shattering on the ground.
Elena froze on the screen. She slowly lowered her phone. She stared at the glittering fragments scattered across the marble as if they were dead stars. For a moment, her face showed genuine terror.