Chapter 3 - WHY ME?
The question embarrassed me because the answer seemed obvious at first.
Why me?
Because Leo loved me.
Victoria hated that.
He reached for me when he was tired.
He calmed faster in my arms.
He laughed when I sang badly.
Normal nanny things.
But jealousy alone did not explain lawyers, declarations, private security, and a staged hallway confrontation.
Detective Hayes asked about the last month.
“Anything changed?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Victoria started insisting I leave my phone in the staff locker during shifts.”
“When?”
“About three weeks ago.”
“Did she explain why?”
“Privacy.”
Marcus sat across the room during part of the interview with counsel present.
His expression changed.
“She never told me that.”
I looked at him.
“You were traveling.”
He nodded slowly.
Marcus traveled constantly for Vance Meridian, the family investment company he ran with his mother’s trust.
Victoria ran the house when he was gone.
That sentence had always sounded ordinary.
Now it sounded dangerous.
Hayes asked another question.
“Any conflict over medical care?”
I thought.
Then remembered.
“Leo had a bruise on his upper arm ten days ago.”
Marcus looked up.
“What bruise?”
I stared at him.
“Victoria said you knew.”
His face answered before his mouth did.
“I didn’t.”
The room changed.
I described it.
Small oval bruises.
Four marks.
Almost like fingertips.
I had photographed them because I documented unusual injuries under my nanny contract.
Victoria saw me take the picture.
She became furious.
She demanded I delete it.
I refused.
That had happened eleven days ago.
The phone restriction started the next morning.
Hayes asked whether I still had the photo.
“Yes.”
I showed her.
Marcus went very still.
“Who was with Leo that day?”
“Victoria. Evelyn. And Dr. Samuel Price came for a home visit.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
“Price isn’t Leo’s pediatrician.”
“I know.”
That was another thing that had bothered me.
Dr. Price was a concierge physician who worked mainly with Victoria’s family.
He said he was checking Leo’s allergies.
No pediatric chart.
No scheduled appointment in the family calendar I managed.
Then the unknown number texted again.
I showed Hayes before touching anything.
CHECK THE BLUE FOLDER IN MARCUS’S STUDY SAFE.
Victoria told me once that Marcus’s study safe was private enough that even she did not know the code.
Marcus looked at the message.
“Whoever sent that believes I have something.”
“Do you?” Hayes asked.
He thought.
Then his eyes sharpened.
“My father’s custody files.”
Victoria’s father-in-law—Marcus’s father—had died three years earlier.
“What custody files?” I asked.
Marcus’s face hardened.
“When I was six, my mother tried to remove me from my father during their divorce. There were allegations. Doctors. Staff statements. Private investigators.”
I felt cold.
“Were the allegations true?”
“Some were. Some weren’t. My father spent years trying to separate fact from manipulation.”
He looked at the petition Victoria had prepared against me.
Then at the photograph of Leo’s bruises.
“I’ve seen this structure before.”
The first major answer landed.
Victoria had not invented the frame-up style herself.
She was copying a family playbook.
But that created a larger question.
Why use an old Vance custody strategy against a nanny when Leo’s father was standing right there?
Then Marcus said something I did not expect.
May you like
“My father’s files also contain a warning about Victoria.”
📖 Marcus recognized the kidnapping setup as an old Vance family tactic, but the files he inherited apparently contained a warning about his own wife written years before Leo was born. 👇
