Chapter 4 - The House That Watched Us
I brought Matthew to a private apartment Omar kept for emergencies. Mrs. Alvarez came with us, refusing to leave the boy alone. She had known Rose since the two of them met at a neighborhood food pantry. She told me Matthew was polite, stubborn, and careful about locking doors. He checked the windows before bed and never liked being photographed.
By sunrise, a doctor had checked him, and Grace Holloway, our family attorney, had arrived with a bag of clothes and a face full of questions.
I told her everything.
She listened without interrupting. When I finished, she locked the apartment door.
"If Nicholas is alive, the legal consequences are enormous," she said. "But first we need proof. And we need to know who else knows about Matthew."
"Camila does."
"Then don't go home alone."
I went anyway, with Omar beside me.
The hallway had been cleaned. The broken mirror was gone, and the floor shone as if nothing had happened. I stood where Rose's blood had been and remembered the way Camila's hands had looked under the chandelier. She had not been crying. She had not been calling for help. She had been looking at the stairs, calculating how much time she had before I woke.
That made me angrier than the blood had.
I found the mirror pieces in a maintenance bin. One section of the wooden frame had a fresh scratch. Omar used a pocket tool to loosen it.
A small brass key dropped into his palm.
There was a folded strip of paper inside the frame. Three words were written in Nicholas's handwriting: DOCK SEVENTEEN. LOW TIDE.
"The cameras," I said.
We went to the security room. The footage from midnight had been replaced by a clean loop of empty hallways. The system showed a maintenance login at 11:51 p.m.
Omar checked the access record.
"This code belongs to Camila's assistant."
"Can you prove she used it?"
"Not yet. But the login came from inside the house."
A soft click sounded behind us.
Camila stood in the doorway, wearing a white robe. Her hair was perfect. Her expression was not.
"Alex," she said. "Why are you digging through security footage?"
I closed my fist around the brass key.
"Because someone tried to hide a woman in my guest room."
She glanced at Omar, then back at me.
"You have no idea what Rose is doing to you."
"Then explain it."
May you like
Camila stepped closer and lowered her voice.
"Your brother wasn't the man you remember."
