Chapter 2 - The Second Administrator
“Give me your phone.”
Vanessa’s smile disappeared.
I kept Sophie against my shoulder while opening the Sterling Home security app. The kitchen feed was live, but the previous seventy-two hours were unavailable.
Not deleted.
Restricted.
Administrator authorization required.
I had created the account myself.
There should have been one administrator.
Me.
There were two.
The second profile displayed only initials.
E.S.
My stomach tightened.
My older sister was Eleanor Sterling.
Vanessa watched my face carefully.
“Now you understand why throwing things wasn’t smart.”
“You think this makes you safe?”
“I think you should call Eleanor before you accuse anybody.”
I called my pediatrician instead.
Then my head of household security, Marcus Reed, and instructed him to come through the service entrance, preserve every device connected to the house, and prevent Vanessa from leaving until I understood whether Sophie required emergency care.
Vanessa laughed softly.
“You can’t detain me.”
“You’re right.”
I stepped aside from the hallway.
“You’re free to leave.”
She hesitated.
That hesitation told me something important.
Vanessa didn’t want to leave.
She wanted access to something inside my house.
Sophie began crying when Vanessa moved.
I carried my daughter into the breakfast room, keeping Vanessa in sight through the glass partition. Sophie devoured applesauce and soft banana while I forced myself not to overwhelm her with questions.
My pediatrician arrived twenty minutes later.
Dr. Laura Bennett examined Sophie while I sat beside her.
Mild dehydration.
Weight loss.
No immediate life-threatening condition.
But when Laura lifted Sophie’s shirt, I saw faint bruising around her upper arm.
My jaw locked.
Laura photographed the marks for her medical record.
“These need documentation.”
Vanessa called from the kitchen, “She falls constantly.”
Laura looked at me.
She didn’t answer Vanessa.
Marcus arrived moments later and examined the camera system.
“The footage wasn’t erased,” he said.
“Then where is it?”
“Moved to private cloud storage.”
“By E.S.?”
Marcus shook his head.
“That account authorized the transfer. But somebody logged into it from inside this house.”
He turned his tablet toward me.
The login had occurred at 12:04 that afternoon.
From my home office.
I had been in Manhattan since seven that morning.
Eleanor was in Boston.
Vanessa had supposedly spent the entire afternoon with Sophie.
I looked toward her.
She had stopped smiling.
Then Marcus enlarged another detail.
The administrator profile E.S. had been created eleven months earlier.
Three months before I hired Vanessa.
May you like
Someone had prepared access to my house long before she ever walked through my front door.
📖 The fake administrator account existed before Vanessa worked for me, and tracing its creation would turn an old family disagreement into something far more dangerous. 👇
