Chapter 9 - INSIDE THE HOUSE
The mansion locked down in under thirty seconds.
Daniel’s security team swept the west wing while Victor ran upstairs.
“Lily!”
Her bedroom door opened.
She stood there holding Ethan.
“We’re okay.”
Victor checked the nursery, hallway, bath, and balcony himself.
Then a radio crackled downstairs.
“Movement in the kitchen corridor.”
Daniel caught the intruder near the wine cellar.
It was not Serena.
It was Thomas Reed, a temporary maintenance worker hired three months earlier.
He had Serena’s old master code written on a strip of paper inside his wallet.
And in his backpack were zip ties, a bottle of sedative, and a prepaid phone.
Victor’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“Who sent you?”
Thomas looked at the floor.
Police separated them.
Two hours later, Detective Mara Ellis emerged from the interview room.
“He says Serena paid him.”
“For what?”
“To remove something from the house.”
Victor looked toward the stairs.
“What?”
Mara hesitated.
“The recorder Lily used.”
Victor exhaled slowly.
“So why the sedative?”
Thomas claimed it was for himself.
Nobody believed him.
Then his phone records came back.
There were fourteen calls between Thomas and Serena over the last month.
One text remained undeleted.
If the nanny becomes a problem, make sure the father believes she ran.
Lily read it twice.
Victor looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
She was silent.
“Lily?”
Her eyes filled.
“I think she already tried.”
Victor felt the room narrow.
“When?”
“Last month.”
May you like
Lily opened her phone and showed him a photograph of her car.
The brake line had been cut.
