The timestamp kept running in the top right corner of the monitor, a pulsing red digit that felt like a hammer against my skull.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Five.
I sat frozen in my office chair, the heavy mahogany desk grounding me while my reality fractured. I was staring at the security footage from the upstairs hallway of my own home, watching as my six-year-old son disappeared behind the heavy, oak door of the cleaning closet.
At first, a desperate, pathetic part of my brain tried to rationalize it. I told myself Caroline would come back quickly. Maybe she was just angry. Maybe she had lost control for a single, regrettable moment. Maybe, somehow, there was a logical explanation that would allow my pristine, carefully constructed world to remain intact.
But the timer kept moving.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
My hand tightened around the computer mouse until my knuckles turned a bruised white. A cold dread coiled in my gut. On the screen, the hallway remained empty, bright, polished, and suffocatingly silent. Behind that narrow door, my little boy had been trapped in the dark.
At minute twenty-seven, Lily appeared on the camera.
She was carrying a woven basket of folded towels. She stopped suddenly in front of the cleaning closet, her head tilting as if she had heard a faint vibration through the wood. Then, she dropped the basket so fast that crisp white towels spilled like ghosts across the marble floor.
She opened the door.
Noah stumbled out.
