Chapter 4 - The Footage in the Dark
The private screening room behind the library was dark, illuminated only by the faint blue glow of the security monitor reflecting off Marco’s scarred knuckles.
On the screen, the timestamp read 7:14 PM—exactly forty minutes before Camille screamed at Elena in the dining room.
The camera angle was high, mounted in the ornate crown molding of my private study, looking down past the cherry-wood desk toward the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The room was empty for a long moment, the dust motes dancing lazily in the sliver of moonlight cutting through the heavy velvet drapes.
Then the side door clicked open.
It wasn't Camille.
It was a man I hadn't seen inside these gates since my father's funeral twelve years ago: Arthur Vance.
Marco paused the video, the image freezing with Vance’s hand resting directly on the brass handle of the floor safe hidden beneath the Persian rug.
"Vance hasn't set foot in Massachusetts since the federal tax inquiry in 2014," I said, leaning forward until my palms rested on the cool mahogany of the console. "How did he get past the perimeter gates? The retinal scanners require a Moretti biometric override."
"He didn't use the gates," Marco replied, tapping a key to advance the playback. "Watch the corner of the frame."
On the monitor, Vance didn't punch a code into the keypad. Instead, he pulled a small, flat electronic device from his pocket—a military-grade signal repeater—and held it against the smart-lock housing. A soft green light blinked once.
Then, the door swung wide open.
"Someone inside the house gave him the master frequency code," I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "Only two people in this estate besides me have the administrative override authority."
"You and Camille," Marco said quietly.
The video rolled forward. On screen, Vance didn't rifle through the cash drawers or look at the corporate bearer bonds sitting in the upper tier of the safe. He bypassed everything of monetary value, reaching straight into the back compartment where my father kept his personal journals and private logs from the old shipping days.
He pulled out a thick, leather-bound volume—the very ledger Marco was currently holding on the desk—and flipped open the cover.
A single photograph slipped from the pages, fluttering down onto the Persian rug.
Vance picked it up, stared at it for a long, calculating second, and tucked it securely into his breast pocket before pocketing the ledger and slipping back out through the side door like a shadow.
"What was in that photograph?" I asked, turning my head slowly to look at Marco.
Marco didn't answer immediately. He reached out, picked up the physical ledger sitting beside the keyboard, and opened it to a dog-eared page near the middle where a small, clear plastic evidence sleeve had been taped over the text.
Inside the sleeve was a polaroid photograph taken twenty-five years ago.
It showed a sprawling estate in Newport—not mine, but one three doors down—and two people standing near the edge of a cliff overlooking Narragansett Bay. One was a young man in a sharp tuxedo with dark hair slicked back.
My father.
The other wasn't my mother.
It was a woman with blonde hair pinned up in an identical champagne-silk style, holding a newborn infant wrapped in a blue blanket.
And inscribed on the back of the polaroid in my father’s sharp, unmistakable cursive was a single sentence that made the room feel suddenly devoid of oxygen:
“The insurance policy is safe. If the girl ever comes back for the title, show her the ledger.”
I stared at the date scrawled in the corner of the photo: October 14, 2001.
May you like
The exact day my older sister—officially declared lost at sea with my mother during a yachting accident off the coast of Maine—was supposed to have died.
---
