Chapter 3 - The Camera
Vivienne took one step toward the console table beneath the camera, and Grant caught the movement immediately.
“Stop.”
He didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t need to.
She froze with one hand hovering near the table where the flower vase’s scattered water still glistened against the polished wood. Family photos leaned at slight angles from the disturbance—Grant holding newborn Noah, Grant at some charity event, Grant beside a blond woman I knew only from framed images and careful silences. Lydia Mercer. Noah’s mother. Dead two years.
Vivienne straightened slowly. “I was only looking for tissues.”
“There are none on that table,” I said.
Her eyes cut toward me, cold and murderous.
Grant ended the call with Dr. Feldman and then made another. “Eli. Front sitting room. Now.”
Eli was the house manager, head of security when needed, and the only person on staff Grant trusted with both money and systems. He had installed the indoor cameras after a tabloid photographer got through the front gate in spring. At the time, everyone complained about privacy. Grant had called it precaution.
Now it might become evidence.
Or it might disappear before we reached it.
I pressed harder against my temple and tried to think clearly through the pounding in my head. “The footage should be on the home server, right?”
Grant looked at me. “And cloud backup.”
Vivienne smiled too quickly. “Then there’s no issue.”
That smile told me there was absolutely an issue.
Noah had finally quieted to broken hiccups, but he still trembled in Grant’s arms. The sight of it did something ugly to my chest. I had worked in three homes before the Mercers. I had seen cold mothers, checked-out fathers, entitled relatives, children treated like decorations. But I had never seen a woman kick a baby for being in her path.
I hadn’t told Grant everything before because I hadn’t had proof. The way Vivienne pinched Noah’s arm when Grant wasn’t looking. The sharp, fake-laughing insults she threw at me. The way Noah cried whenever her perfume entered a room. Individually, each moment had been deniable. Together, they formed a pattern that made me sick.
Grant must have seen something in my face. “What?”
I hesitated.
That was my mistake.
Vivienne pounced on it. “Yes, Tessa. Tell him what you’ve been building toward.”
“Building toward?” My voice came out rough.
“She hates me,” Vivienne said. “Everyone in this house knows it.”
“Maybe because you just assaulted a child.”
“You attacked me.”
Grant’s patience broke by a degree. “Enough.”
Eli entered from the hall at a near run, then stopped dead when he took in the room—the blood on me, the broken vase, Grant holding Noah, Vivienne rigid beside the console.
“Sir?”
“Access the front sitting room feed,” Grant said. “Now.”
Eli moved to the cabinet drawer where a tablet was kept for the camera system. He entered the code and pulled up a grid of feeds. My stomach dropped when he frowned.
“The living room camera is offline.”
Grant went still.
“Since when?” he asked.
Eli tapped the screen, jaw tightening. “Signal lost eleven minutes ago.”
Eleven minutes.
Exactly enough time to cover the attack.
My skin went cold.
Grant’s eyes lifted to Vivienne. “Explain that.”
She gave a short, incredulous laugh. “You think I disabled your security system?”
“If you didn’t,” I said, “you’re very lucky.”
Her expression sharpened. “Careful.”
Eli checked again. “The feed dropped, but I may still be able to recover local storage if the camera card wasn’t removed.”
Grant handed Noah to me. “Take him.”
The transfer was quick but meaningful. He trusted me to hold his son. He trusted Eli with the system. He did not trust Vivienne with either.
Noah tucked his wet face into my shoulder as Grant crossed to the camera. It sat above the entryway, small and white and impossible-looking. Harmless. Ordinary.
Grant reached up, felt around the housing, then slowly pulled his hand back down.
Between his fingers was a tiny memory card.
Removed, but not taken away.
Vivienne’s lipstick-blanched face gave her away before words could.
Grant looked at the card in his hand. “Interesting.”
“I’ve never seen that before,” she said too quickly.
Eli muttered, “Sir, those cards don’t fall out on their own.”
Grant turned toward me and held up the card. “If this shows what you said it shows, everything changes.”
I stared at the sliver of plastic in his hand.
The micro-reward hit like breath after drowning. The footage might still exist.
Then Vivienne said the one thing that made the room colder than before.
“Only if you’re sure it hasn’t been tampered with.”
She wasn’t defending herself anymore.
May you like
She was preparing to challenge the truth itself.
📖 We had the camera card in Grant’s hand—but the moment Vivienne questioned whether it could be trusted, the fight turned from what happened to who could prove it. 👇
