Chapter 1 - THE RED LIGHT
“Please—stop! You’re hurting him!”
Lily’s scream cracked through the marble foyer just as Victor Blackwood stepped inside his own house three hours early.
He did not announce himself.
He did not need to.
Fourteen-month-old Ethan was on the floor beside the coffee table, sobbing so hard he could barely breathe. Lily, his twenty-six-year-old nanny, was kneeling beside him with both hands raised, afraid to touch the child because Serena Vale had one hand clamped around Ethan’s small wrist.
“Let go of him!” Lily cried.
Serena’s face was cold. Beautiful. Controlled.
“Who do you think he’ll believe?” she whispered. “His future wife… or a cheap nanny?”
Victor stopped in the shadow of the archway.
For six weeks, he had been planning a wedding to Serena. For eleven months, he had trusted her inside his home. He had trusted her near his son.
Now Ethan screamed again.
Victor moved.
“What happened here?”
Serena jerked upright. Her grip vanished from Ethan’s wrist.
“Victor.”
Lily looked like she had been punched by relief.
Serena recovered first. She pointed at Lily.
“She did it.”
Victor’s eyes went to his son. Ethan’s right arm hung strangely against his body.
Then Victor noticed the security camera above the fireplace.
The indicator light was dark.
“Why is that camera off?” he asked.
Serena’s face changed for less than a second.
“I don’t know.”
Victor crouched beside Ethan. “Lily?”
“She turned it off this morning,” Lily said, shaking. “Sir, I swear to you, I never touched him like that.”
Serena laughed once. “Of course she’d say that.”
Then Victor saw something under the table.
A tiny black recorder.
Its red light was blinking.
He picked it up.
Serena went pale.
Victor pressed PLAY.
Her own voice filled the room.
“You think anyone will believe a cheap nanny over me?”
Nobody moved.
Then a housemaid appeared at the top of the staircase, crying.
“Mr. Blackwood…”
Victor looked up.
May you like
The maid gripped the banister.
“This wasn’t the first time.”
