Chapter 3 - The House That Watched Us
Within three minutes, the estate stopped feeling like a mansion and started feeling like a crime scene.
Marco locked the gates. Guards checked doors. Rosa cursed in Italian. Lorenzo stood at the breakfast table staring at the photographs as if he could force them to confess.
"Who touched this room?" he asked.
The head of security, Calvin Rusk, swallowed. "Nobody, sir. Camera shows no entry after midnight."
"Then the envelope grew legs?"
I raised a hand. "I vote haunted mansion. Less paperwork."
Nobody laughed.
Lorenzo finally looked at me. "Pack."
"Excuse me?"
"You're going to Milwaukee until I know what's happening."
That tone hit an old nerve.
"You don't get to order me out because you're scared."
His jaw tightened. "I'm not scared."
"Great. Then stop acting terrified."
Marco stared at the floor with the expression of a man reconsidering every career choice he had ever made.
Lorenzo stepped closer. He was enormous. I was not. But after two years with Ethan, I knew the difference between intimidation and fear wearing a hard face.
"Someone entered a secure room to threaten you," Lorenzo said. "I will not gamble with your safety."
"And I won't spend ninety days proving I'm not afraid of you just to run because somebody owns a printer."
Silence.
Rosa took a sip of coffee. "I like her."
The footage became the real problem.
At 2:14 a.m., every camera covering the east wing went black for exactly seven minutes.
At 2:21, they returned.
No alarm.
No system error.
Someone with administrator access had manually created the gap.
Only four people had that level of access: Lorenzo, Marco, Calvin, and the estate systems manager, Owen Pike.
Owen was on vacation in Florida.
Calvin had been employed by the Duca family for fifteen years.
Marco had known Lorenzo since childhood.
"Which one do you trust?" I asked.
Lorenzo looked at the list.
"All of them."
"That's inconvenient."
"That's dangerous."
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded on the screen.
It showed me asleep in my locked bedroom the night before.
Under the picture was one sentence:
THE KEY WON'T SAVE YOU.
Lorenzo's face changed when he saw it.
Then Marco whispered, "That angle isn't from any camera in this house."
May you like
Which meant someone had been standing inside my room.
While I slept.
