Chapter 3 - THE MISSING CAMERA FEED
Victor moved Ethan to a secluded Blackwood residence overlooking Lake Michigan
before sunrise. The house had fewer rooms, no public staff, and a security system
installed by an outside firm that Dante had never touched. Lily went with Ethan
because Dr. Hale insisted that stability mattered more than appearances, and
because Victor no longer trusted anyone who had worked under Dante’s chain of
command. The mansion where the abuse occurred remained sealed as a crime scene.
For the first time in years, Victor had no faith in the walls that carried his
name. Every keypad, camera, hidden passage, and loyal employee had become a
question.
Eleanor Price brought in a digital forensics team from Boston. They reconstructed
deleted server logs and discovered something Dante had gone to extraordinary
lengths to hide: the nursery cameras had not merely been turned off. Their feeds
had been redirected to a private server for several minutes before each deletion.
Someone had been watching in real time from outside the Blackwood network. The
destination address led to a shell company owned through three layers of trusts.
One layer connected to Lucien Montigue’s development group. Another connected to a
defunct security consultancy once founded by Dante. The final owner was hidden
behind attorney privilege. “They built a tunnel into my house,” Victor said. The
lead analyst corrected him softly. “They built a window.”
Lily asked for the few fragments of footage that survived. Most were corrupted,
but one clip lasted nineteen seconds. The image showed Ethan’s nursery at 2:14
a.m. Serena entered carrying a glass of water. Five seconds later, Dante stepped
in behind her. He did not touch the child. Instead, he crossed directly to the
wall safe where Victor stored emergency medical documents. Serena stood over the
crib while Dante removed a folder, photographed several pages, and replaced it.
The audio track was missing. The clip ended when Serena looked directly into the
camera. Her face showed no surprise. She knew it was running. She wanted someone
to see.
Inside the stolen folder, according to Victor, were Ethan’s birth records, trust
documents, blood type information, and the sealed will of Ethan’s late mother,
Emily. Emily Blackwood had died in a boating accident eleven months after Ethan’s
birth. The official investigation blamed sudden weather and equipment failure.
Victor had never questioned it. Lily saw the old pain in his face when he said
Emily’s name. “What did her will say?” she asked. Victor answered that Emily left
her personal fortune in trust for Ethan and appointed Victor as primary guardian.
If Victor died, guardianship passed not to Victor’s relatives but to Emily’s
younger sister, Claire Ward, a marine biologist living overseas. Serena was not in
the document. “Then the wedding rider could be challenged,” Lily said. “Unless the
original will disappears,” Eleanor replied.
The sealed original was no longer in the mansion safe. Victor’s anger became
unnervingly quiet. He ordered a search of every Blackwood property and had Eleanor
contact the law firm that drafted Emily’s estate papers. The firm retained a
certified copy, but the original contained a handwritten codicil that had never
been digitized. Victor remembered only one sentence: Emily had written that no
person connected to the Montigue family should ever exercise control over Ethan’s
inheritance. At the time, Victor assumed it referred to a land dispute between the
families. Now the warning seemed prophetic. Lucien claimed he knew nothing about
it. Serena refused to answer questions without counsel.
Lily spent the afternoon with Ethan in the lake house library, building towers
from wooden blocks with one hand because her ribs still hurt. The little boy was
unusually quiet. Whenever a door opened too quickly, he flinched. Victor watched
from the threshold. He had spent years believing money could buy distance from
danger. Instead, danger had worn tailored clothes, dined at his table, and kissed
his cheek in front of cameras. Lily looked up and caught him staring. “He needs
routine,” she said. “Not guards.” Victor glanced at the armed man at the end of
the corridor and dismissed him. It was a small act, almost absurdly small, but
Ethan smiled when the hallway became empty.
That evening, the forensics team recovered a hidden audio file from the redirected
camera server. It contained no voices, only a sequence of touch-tone sounds. Lily
recognized them as an old alarm keypad because the Blackwood nursery had used the
same model before an upgrade. The digits decoded to a storage unit number on the
city’s south side. Victor wanted to send men. Lily argued that whoever left the
clue expected Blackwood security, and that could trigger another trap. Eleanor
agreed. They called a retired federal investigator named Marcus Reed, who had once
investigated organized crime and now worked independently. Marcus owed Victor no
loyalty and disliked him enough to be useful.
Marcus inspected the storage facility with police liaison support and found a unit
rented under Celia Torres’s name. Inside were three suitcases, a prepaid phone,
printed nursery photographs, and a small lockbox. No body. No obvious trap. The
lockbox held dozens of memory cards, each labeled by date. The oldest dated back
five months before Serena moved into the mansion. The videos showed Dante entering
the nursery alone, photographing documents, moving medical supplies, and testing
camera angles. Later clips showed Serena. Later still, Lucien appeared once,
speaking with Dante beside the crib while Ethan slept. The sound on that file had
been deliberately preserved.
“If Victor marries her,” Lucien said, “the guardianship path opens. If he refuses,
we use the contingency.” Dante asked, “And the child?” Lucien’s answer came after
a pause. “The child only needs to be fragile enough that no judge trusts Victor’s
household.”
Victor watched the footage twice. No one spoke. The plan was not merely to hurt
Ethan. It was to create a record of neglect and instability around Victor, then
use Serena’s marriage to seize legal control or, failing that, convince a court
that Victor’s home was unsafe. Lily felt sick. Every bruise had been both cruelty
and evidence engineered for future use. Ethan had been turned into a weapon
against his own father.
Then Marcus played the final file on the prepaid phone. Celia’s voice whispered
through static. “If you are hearing this, Dante found me. Serena is not the one in
charge. Lucien is not either. The person paying them knows everything about
Emily’s death.” The recording cut off with a crash and hurried breathing. Victor’s
face emptied. Lily reached for the table because the room seemed to tilt. Marcus
rewound the last five seconds and increased the volume. Beneath Celia’s breathing,
another sound emerged: a church bell followed by the low horn of a freight train.
May you like
Marcus looked up. “That narrows the area.” Victor was already standing. “Find her
before Dante does.”
