Chapter 3 - The Two-Fourteen Recording
At 2:14 the next morning, I sat in the security room with Daniel while Lily slept upstairs with my sister, Anna.
“Show me everything,” I said.
Daniel pulled footage from a backup server Victoria apparently hadn’t known existed.
The screen showed the library three nights earlier.
Victoria entered barefoot in a robe. She went straight to Claire’s old writing desk.
Not the liquor cabinet. Not the safe behind the painting.
Claire’s desk.
Victoria opened drawers, removed folders, photographed papers with her phone, then crouched beside the cabinet where Lily’s music box was normally kept.
She picked it up, turned it over, and ran her finger along the bottom.
My stomach went cold.
“She knew,” I said.
“Knew what?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know.”
That was the problem.
Victoria had lived in the estate for eighteen months. I had given her keys, staff access, my calendar, the alarm code, and a place beside me at every family meeting. I had assumed her questions about Claire’s estate were insecurity.
Maybe they had been research.
At 2:19, the footage showed Victoria pulling a thin envelope from Claire’s desk.
She opened it.
Read it.
Then slipped it into her robe.
“Zoom in,” I said.
Daniel froze the frame.
Across the envelope, in Claire’s handwriting, were four words:
FOR LILY - AGE EIGHTEEN.
I felt sick.
“That envelope was meant for my daughter.”
Daniel nodded. “Do you know what was in it?”
“No.”
My phone rang.
It was Charles Wynn, the attorney who had handled Claire’s trust.
“Mark,” he said, sounding wide awake despite the hour. “I got your voicemail. You said Victoria mentioned control of Lily’s trust?”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence.
Then Charles said, “Do not sign anything she puts in front of you.”
“I haven’t.”
“Good. Because yesterday my office received a notarized amendment with your signature on it.”
May you like
I stood up.
“I never signed an amendment.”
