Chapter 6 - THE RECORDER
The recorder could have told me everything.
Instead, Detective Ortiz refused to let me touch it.
For the first time since Ethan was found, I was grateful someone said no to me.
“If this becomes criminal evidence,” she explained, “we preserve it correctly.”
A digital-forensics technician made a verified copy while documenting the device, serial number, storage card, file structure, and timestamps.
Only then were selected recordings played for investigators.
I was allowed to hear portions because my voice appeared in one of them.
The first file contained mostly darkness translated into sound.
Ethan breathing.
A bottle scraping concrete.
Distant footsteps.
Then Vanessa.
“Stop crying. Your father will ruin everything if you make him suspicious.”
Ethan whimpered.
“I want Daddy.”
“You’ll see him when this is over.”
My nails dug into my palms.
That sentence mattered.
She had planned for Ethan to survive.
It did not make what she did less monstrous.
But it changed the question.
Why hide him instead of simply taking him somewhere else?
A male voice answered from farther away.
“The wall buys us one night. After the filing, he can be moved.”
I recognized Adrian.
Not because of the voice alone.
Because he always swallowed the word “filing” into two clipped syllables.
The technician marked the timestamp.
6:31 p.m. the previous evening.
Adrian had told me he had not been at the mansion before the gala.
The recorder said otherwise.
Then Dr. Hart spoke.
“No more medication. His respiration was too slow after the last dose.”
I stood so quickly my chair scraped backward.
Ortiz lifted a hand.
“Mr. Sterling.”
“He drugged my son.”
“We’re investigating that.”
“He said it.”
“We still verify what substance, when it was administered, who administered it, whether the file was altered, and who was present.”
The discipline infuriated me.
Then I understood why it was necessary.
Vanessa would attack every weak assumption.
We needed facts she could not talk around.
The next sound was paper unfolding.
Adrian said, “Once Richard signs tonight, none of this can be undone.”
Vanessa answered, “Then file the proxy before anyone calls him.”
Hart said something too faint to hear.
The technician enhanced nothing.
He preserved the original.
“We may be able to clarify it later,” he said. “But we don’t manufacture words that aren’t there.”
Another sound followed.
A door.
Footsteps.
Then a fourth voice.
“Vanessa, this was never supposed to involve the child.”
I knew that voice before the sentence finished.
Miles Barrett.
My attorney.
I sat down again.
On the recording, Vanessa replied:
“You drafted the incapacity language. Don’t pretend you’re innocent now.”
Miles said, “I drafted it for a legitimate succession emergency.”
“And now we have one.”
“No. You manufactured one.”
That was not the confession I expected.
Miles knew enough to be guilty of something.
But perhaps not what I had assumed.
Then his recorded voice said the line that changed my next move.
“I’m withdrawing the moment I leave this house, and I’m sending Richard the original email chain.”
I checked my inbox.
Nothing.
Miles had promised to send me evidence.
He never had.
May you like
And no one had been able to reach him since 2:14 that morning.
📖 Miles sounded less like Vanessa’s partner than a man trying to escape her plan, but the missing email meant whatever he intended to reveal had never reached me. 👇
