Chapter 3: The War Room
Leaving Beatrice standing in the sunroom, her mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish, I simply nodded. I gave her a dead, perfectly polite smile, turned my back, and walked over to my daughter.
“Mommy?” Lily whispered, her voice trembling, expecting me to yell, expecting the chaos that had clearly become her daily reality.
“I’m here, sweetheart,” I said, my voice softer than silk. “I’m going to pick you up now. We are going upstairs.”
I lifted her gently, mindful of the heavy cast. She buried her face into my neck, her small hands clutching my blouse with desperate strength. She smelled like stale sweat and fear. I carried her out of the sunroom, ignoring Beatrice entirely, and took the back servant’s staircase up to the Master Suite.
I laid Lily gently on the center of my king-sized bed, pulling a heavy cashmere throw over her trembling shoulders. “Do not move from this bed, Lily. You are safe now. I promise you, nobody is ever going to hurt you again.”
I locked the heavy oak doors of the suite, slid the deadbolt into place, and walked into my adjacent private study.
The party raged on outside, oblivious to the fact that the architect of their doom had just taken her seat. I opened my laptop. My fingers flew across the keyboard with lethal precision. Emotion was a liability; data was a weapon.
First, I accessed the estate’s internal security system. When I bought the house, I had a state-of-the-art system installed. Beatrice knew about the perimeter cameras. She did not know about the discreet, pinhole cameras installed in the common areas and stairwells—a precaution I had taken precisely because I was an absentee mother leaving her child with a nanny.
I pulled up the archives from two days ago. I found the timestamp for the basement stairs.
I watched the high-definition footage in agonizing silence. I watched Lily walking carefully down the wooden steps, holding her favorite stuffed rabbit. I watched Hunter step out from the shadows of the landing. I watched him violently, intentionally shove both hands into her back. I watched my tiny daughter tumble, a chaotic tangle of limbs, hitting the concrete floor at the bottom with a sickening lack of grace.
And then, the camera angle shifted. Beatrice had been standing in the adjacent hallway the entire time. She watched Lily fall. She watched Lily scream in agony on the concrete. Beatrice didn’t run to her. She took a sip of her wine, looked at her watch, and casually told Hunter to go wash his hands for dinner.
Video file downloaded. Evidence secured. I picked up my cell phone. I dialed my private wealth manager in Geneva.
“Marcus,” I said. My voice was devoid of any human warmth. It was the voice I used when a negotiation was over, and the slaughter was about to begin.
“Victoria? It’s Sunday—”
