Chapter 3
Claire came back alone.
I did not ask why.
She answered anyway.
“Audrey is with your mother.”
Good.
The safest room in the estate.
I showed Claire the videos.
She watched the first one.
Then the second.
By the third, she started crying.
“I knew something was wrong.”
I looked at her.
“What did you know?”
“Miss Vanessa kept changing Audrey’s schedule.”
“How?”
“She’d dismiss me right before something happened.”
My jaw tightened.
“Examples.”
“The pool incident. The stair fall. The broken flowerpot.”
Each one matched a folder.
I looked at Vanessa.
She rolled her eyes.
“Claire hates me.”
Claire flinched.
There it was.
Vanessa had trained her too.
I turned toward Claire.
“Keep talking.”
She swallowed.
“She told me Audrey needed time alone with her stepmother.”
Reasonable words.
Useful cover.
“And when you resisted?”
“She said I was making Audrey dependent.”
Vanessa laughed.
“She is dependent. She’s a maid.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
Then at Claire.
“She is someone my daughter trusted.”
That distinction landed.
Claire wiped her face.
“There’s more.”
Of course.
“There always is.”
She took out her own phone.
Not videos.
Voice recordings.
“I started recording after Audrey’s eyebrow.”
My breathing slowed.
“What happened?”
Claire looked at Vanessa.
“She said Audrey tripped against the garden bench.”
“That’s what I was told.”
Claire nodded.
“But Audrey told me Vanessa pushed the gardening cart toward her.”
Vanessa snapped.
“She walked into it.”
Claire’s face tightened.
“So I asked why the wheel had been locked.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“The cart couldn’t roll.”
Silence.
Claire continued.
“Someone had to unlock it first.”
My eyes moved toward Vanessa.
She said nothing.
Claire played the recording.
Vanessa’s voice filled the terrace.
“If Damian asks, the child was running.”
Then another voice.
Male.
“Why keep doing this if the bruises aren’t enough?”
I froze.
Vanessa answered:
“Because eventually he’ll believe she’s unsafe here.”
My jaw tightened.
The male voice spoke again.
“And then?”
Vanessa laughed softly.
“Then he sends her away.”
May you like
I stopped the recording.
There was another person inside this plan.
