Chapter 4 - The House of Glass
If Victor and Chloe thought they had won, they were about to discover what it meant to live inside a machine built by an enemy.
Our mansion was a marvel of modern engineering, fully integrated with Vanguard’s most advanced prototype systems. Lighting, temperature, security, audio—everything was controlled by a centralized server that I had built with my own two hands.
Victor had revoked my administrative access the day after the twins died, thinking that would lock me out. He forgot that a master architect always leaves a backdoor.
The psychological warfare began on a Tuesday evening.
Victor was out at a "business dinner" (which my tracking software confirmed was actually a high-stakes poker game), leaving Chloe alone in the mansion. She was lounging in the master bathtub, sipping champagne and listening to a podcast. I was sitting in my locked guest room, typing lines of code into the dark terminal on my screen.
Execute: Protocol Chills.
In the master bathroom, the digital thermostat plummeted from a comfortable 74 degrees to a freezing 50 degrees in less than three minutes.
I watched through the concealed security cameras I had reactivated. Chloe shivered, sitting up in the tub. She reached for the waterproof control panel on the wall to turn the heat back up.
She tapped the screen. Access Denied.
She frowned, tapping it harder. Access Denied.
Execute: Protocol Echo.
Through the hidden surround-sound speakers in the bathroom ceiling, a sound began to play. It was faint at first, just a whisper at the very edge of hearing.
It was a recording of Maya laughing.
Chloe froze. The champagne flute slipped from her fingers, shattering on the tile floor. She looked around wildly, her eyes wide with sudden panic.
"Victor?" she called out, her voice trembling.
I typed another command.
The bathroom lights flickered, then plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
The laugh echoed again, slightly louder this time, accompanied by the sound of Oliver’s little footsteps running across hardwood floors.
Chloe screamed. It was a raw, visceral sound of pure terror. She scrambled out of the freezing tub, slipping on the wet floor and cutting her knee on the broken glass. She threw open the bathroom door and bolted into the master bedroom, gasping for air.
As soon as she crossed the threshold, the lights in the bathroom snapped back on. The temperature returned to normal. The audio stopped.
I watched her collapse onto the bed, sobbing uncontrollably, wrapping herself in the duvet.
When Victor returned home two hours later, Chloe was frantic. She dragged him into the bathroom, pointing at the vents, babbling about ghosts and hacked systems.
Victor just looked at her with exhausted annoyance.
"Chloe, you're being hysterical," he snapped, completely unaware that my hidden microphone was recording every word. "The house isn't haunted. The system is state-of-the-art. Nobody hacked it."
"I heard them!" she shrieked, gripping his lapels. "I heard the kids! She knows, Victor! Evelyn knows what we did!"
Victor slapped her. Hard.
It was the same sharp crack that had echoed through the chapel at the funeral.
"Keep your mouth shut," Victor hissed, his eyes burning with rage. "Nobody knows anything. I disabled the alarms myself. I watched the carbon monoxide levels rise on the dashboard. Evelyn is a broken mess who can barely tie her own shoes. You are losing your mind. Pull yourself together, or I'll find someone who can."
I sat in the dark guest room, saving the audio file to the encrypted server.
Not only had I terrified his mistress, but I had just recorded a direct, undeniable confession to the murder of my children.
I traced my fingers over the silver butterfly resting on my desk.
May you like
"We have him, Maya," I whispered into the dark. "Just a few more days."
---
