Chapter 9 - My Room
My dresser drawers had been yanked out and dumped onto the floor, my mattress sliced open, and the hidden envelope beneath my travel case was gone.
I stood in the doorway of my room in the staff wing and felt the remaining blood drain from my face. Grant was behind me, Eli to one side, two security men already combing the corridor. The break-in had been precise, ugly, and personal.
Not theft for value.
Search for purpose.
Grant scanned the damage. “Was anything else taken?”
I stepped inside carefully. Clothes, toiletries, my old nursing textbooks, a framed picture of my younger sister and me, the cheap silver watch I never wore anymore—everything had been tossed but not stolen.
I opened the bedside drawer with shaking fingers. Empty.
“That’s not right,” I whispered.
“What was there?” Grant asked.
I looked up at him. This was the moment I had been moving toward since the hospital, though I hadn’t known it. The moment where not telling something became more dangerous than telling it.
“A second memory card.”
His expression sharpened. “From where?”
“From my phone.” I swallowed. “I had started recording things.”
Grant said nothing.
Eli did. “What things?”
“Vivienne. Mostly around Noah. Not much. Short clips. Times she spoke to him roughly. Once when she twisted his wrist because he threw food.” Shame burned my throat. “I kept telling myself I needed a pattern before I came to Grant.”
“You hid evidence in your room,” Grant said.
“I protected what I had because I didn’t know if anyone would help me.”
He absorbed that in silence.
I went on quickly. “There wasn’t enough on it to prove the kick today. But it showed prior behavior. Maybe enough to establish pattern.”
“And now it’s gone,” Eli said.
“Yes.”
Grant stepped farther into the room, surveying the wreckage with the cold concentration I was beginning to understand as his version of fury. “How many people knew you had it?”
“No one.”
“Think.”
I forced myself to replay. Nights after work, locking my door, labeling files under fake names, sliding the card into the envelope. No one had seen me do it.
Then a memory surfaced.
Two days earlier, Vivienne had entered the staff hall without warning. She claimed she was looking for the powder room because guests were in the formal sitting room. She had stood at my doorway for a moment too long, eyes moving over my shelf, my bag, my room.
“I don’t know if she knew,” I said. “But she suspected I wasn’t stupid.”
Eli crouched near the closet. “No forced entry to the exterior wing. Whoever did this likely used an internal code or key.”
Grant looked at him. “List everyone with access.”
“Already started.”
That was the new direction of the story: we were no longer collecting only what Vivienne had done. We were confronting what she could still do through other people.
I picked up the small frame of my sister and set it upright. “There’s something else.”
Grant’s tone changed. “Say it.”
“The second card wasn’t the only reason I kept quiet.” I met his eyes. “Vivienne once told me that employees who confused concern with importance had a way of disappearing from households.”
“She threatened you?”
“Not directly. Not in words any lawyer would call a threat. But yes.”
Grant’s face hardened further. “When?”
“Three weeks ago. After Noah clung to me at dinner instead of going to her.”
Eli found something under the bed and lifted it with gloved fingers: a torn scrap of heavy cream paper. I recognized the stationery immediately. Mercer house letterhead.
There were only four typed words visible:
...knows about the card.
I stared at it.
Grant stepped closer. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
But I did know one thing: whoever went through my room had either brought that note or dropped part of something bigger during the search. Either way, the break-in wasn’t random. It was targeted by someone aware of evidence.
Eli stood. “We’ll dust and check cameras.”
I gave a short, humorless laugh. “Assuming those still work.”
Grant looked at the destruction around us and made a decision. “You’re not staying in the staff wing tonight.”
I blinked. “Where exactly am I supposed to stay?”
“In the main house,” he said. “Near Noah.”
I understood the practical reason instantly. If I remained useful, visible, and close to the child, I’d be harder to isolate.
But it also changed perception, power, and risk.
Before I could respond, Eli’s phone vibrated. He checked it and said, “Marta has asked to speak privately. She says it concerns something she saw in this hallway an hour before the break-in.”
Another witness.
Another potential answer.
Another consequence.
Grant looked at me. “Can you do this now?”
May you like
I touched the throbbing bandage over my stitches and nodded. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
📖 My hidden evidence was gone, and the note proved someone knew about it—but Marta was ready to describe who had been lurking near my room before everything was torn apart. 👇
