Chapter 1
Yet even he looked uncertain now.
“Sir,” he murmured, “should we go in?”
Every part of me wanted to leave the surveillance room, cross the courtyard, and demand answers.
But I forced myself to remain seated.
“Not yet.”
The words tasted bitter.
On the screen, Rosa bent and retrieved Martina’s stuffed rabbit. She brushed imaginary dust from its ears and held it out.
Patricia took it from her before Martina could reach for it.
“No,” she said. “She can have it back when she learns to behave.”
Martina’s eyes filled with tears, but she did not cry.
That frightened me more than crying would have.
A child who cried still believed someone might comfort her.
A child who swallowed her tears had learned that comfort might not come.
Daniela rose slowly.
“She didn’t make the mess,” she said.
Patricia looked at her. “Excuse me?”
“I did.”
Martina shook her head at once. “No, you didn’t.”
Daniela squeezed her hand.
I understood then.
My older daughter was trying to protect her sister by taking the blame.
Patricia walked toward her.
Daniela stood very still, though her chin trembled.
Before Patricia could speak, Rosa moved again.
“The books were already on the rug when Mr. Andrés left,” she said. “I asked Daniela to leave them there because we were going to sort them after breakfast.”
Patricia’s face tightened.
“You seem to have an answer for everything.”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“You’re calling me a liar?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Patricia smiled.
“Good. Because people who lie in this house don’t stay long.”
Mateo looked at me again.
This time, I did not tell him to wait.
I reached for the microphone connected to the house intercom.
Then I stopped.
Something had changed on the screen.
Rosa was no longer looking at Patricia.
She was looking toward the small camera hidden above the fireplace.
Directly at me.
It was impossible.
The camera was concealed behind a carved wooden panel. Only Mateo, the technician who installed it, and I knew its location.
Yet Rosa’s eyes remained fixed on it for a long second.
Then she lowered her gaze.
Patricia did not notice.
She tossed the stuffed rabbit onto a high shelf and turned toward the kitchen.
“I’m having coffee on the terrace,” she said. “Clean this room before I come back.”
When she was gone, Rosa waited.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Then she crossed the room and closed the terrace doors.
She knelt in front of my daughters.
“Are you both all right?”
Martina nodded, though tears had begun slipping down her cheeks.
Daniela wiped them away with the sleeve of her sweater.
“We’re fine,” she said.
She was ten years old and already speaking like an adult who did not want to become a burden.
Rosa pulled them both into her arms.
The sight broke something inside me.
For weeks, I had watched Rosa’s affection and wondered whether it was manipulation.
Now I saw what it had always been.
Protection.
She whispered something I could not hear.
Mateo increased the volume.
“You remember what we talked about,” Rosa said gently. “You stay together. You do not argue with Miss Patricia. And if you feel afraid, you go to the music room and lock the door.”
Daniela nodded.
Martina held Rosa’s sleeve.
“When is Dad coming home?”
Rosa looked toward the hidden camera again.
“Soon,” she said.
I stood so suddenly that my chair rolled backward.
“She knows.”
Mateo frowned. “Knows what?”
“She knows I’m watching.”
“Maybe she was only looking at the fireplace.”
“No.”
I had seen certainty in her eyes.
Rosa knew.
The question was how.
Before I could decide what to do, Patricia reappeared on another monitor. She crossed the rear corridor, entered my private office, and closed the door behind her.
That room was supposed to remain locked whenever I was away.
I had taken the main key with me.
Mateo immediately switched camera angles.
Patricia opened the bottom drawer of my desk with a small silver key.
My anger cooled into something sharper.
She had not forced the lock.
She had her own key.
Patricia began searching through folders.
Not hurriedly.
Not nervously.
She moved like someone who had done it before.
“She’s looking for something,” Mateo said.
I watched her remove an envelope from beneath a stack of legal documents. She opened it, scanned the contents, and took several photographs with her phone.
The envelope contained documents related to the trust I had created for my daughters after their mother died.
Only my attorney, my accountant, and I were supposed to know where those papers were kept.
Patricia returned everything to its place.
Then she opened the locked cabinet behind my desk.
Inside were family records, property deeds, insurance documents, and a small wooden box that had belonged to my wife, Elena.
Patricia touched the box but did not open it.
Instead, she removed a blue file marked with the name of one of my holding companies.
Mateo leaned toward the screen.
“That file wasn’t there yesterday.”
I looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I checked the office before you left. You asked me to make sure the camera had a clear view of the desk and cabinet. That file wasn’t in the cabinet.”
Patricia had placed it there herself.
She opened it and removed a sheet of paper.
Even through the camera, I recognized my company letterhead.
She took another photograph.
Then she returned the file to the cabinet and left the office.
Mateo began typing on the surveillance computer.
“I’ll save the footage separately.”
“Make three copies.”
He nodded.
I was still staring at the empty office.
The cruelty toward my daughters was enough to end my relationship with Patricia.
But the office meant something more.
This was not only about jealousy, control, or resentment.
She had a purpose.
And whatever that purpose was, she had been patient enough to earn my trust before carrying it out.
A movement on the living-room monitor caught my attention.
Rosa had sent the girls upstairs.
She stood alone now, gripping the back of a chair.
Then she reached into the pocket of her apron and removed a folded piece of paper.
She looked toward the camera once more.
Slowly, she unfolded the paper and held it against her chest.
Written in thick black letters were four words.
DO NOT CONFRONT HER YET.
Mateo and I stared at the screen.
“How does she know?” he whispered.
Rosa lowered the note, folded it, and slipped it back into her pocket.
Then she returned to cleaning the room as if nothing had happened.
I wanted to believe she was protecting us.
But uncertainty had already taken root in me.
Patricia had spent weeks teaching me how easily appearances could deceive.
Now even the truth seemed capable of wearing a disguise.
“Find out whether Rosa has been in contact with anyone from the security company,” I told Mateo.
His eyes flickered.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Sir, she just protected your daughters.”
“I know.”
“And warned you.”
“I know that too.”
He studied my face, then turned back to the keyboard.
“You think she may be involved?”
“I think someone gave Patricia a key to my office. Someone placed that blue file in my cabinet. And someone told Rosa about cameras that no one was supposed to know existed.”
Mateo’s jaw tightened.
“There are only three people who knew.”
I looked at him.
The room fell silent.
Mateo slowly leaned back.
“You. Me. And the installer.”
“I know.”
“If you think I told her—”
“I don’t know what to think.”
For the first time in fifteen years, there was hurt in his eyes.
I regretted the words immediately, but I could not take them back.
Suspicion was like smoke. Once it entered a room, it touched everything.
Mateo stood.
“I’ll check the access records.”
He left without another word.
I remained alone with the screens.
Upstairs, Daniela and Martina sat on the floor of the music room. Rosa had brought them colored pencils and paper.
Patricia was on the terrace speaking on her phone.
The camera had no audio outside, but her body language was tense. She paced beside the fountain, stopping every few steps to glance toward the house.
Then she typed a message.
A moment later, the phone on my desk vibrated.
A message from Patricia appeared.
I miss you already. The house feels empty without you.
I read it twice.
On the monitor, she was not smiling.
I replied with one hand.
I miss you too. Everything all right?
Her answer came quickly.
Perfect. The girls are happy, and Rosa is being helpful for once.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
The lie was so effortless that it frightened me.
Before I could respond, my phone rang.
It was my attorney, Samuel Ortega.
“Andrés,” he said, “did you authorize Patricia to contact me about the girls’ trust?”
My body went still.
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon. She said you wanted to discuss adding her as a secondary guardian after the wedding.”
“I never said that.”
There was a pause.
“I suspected as much.”
“What exactly did she ask?”
“She wanted to know whether marriage would give her any automatic authority over the trust. I told her it would not. Then she asked what would happen if you became incapacitated.”
The surveillance room seemed to grow colder.
“What did you tell her?”
“Very little. I said the existing documents were clear.”
“And they are?”
“Yes. Elena’s sister, Camila, is named as temporary guardian until a court review. Financial control remains with the independent trustee.”
Camila had lived in Argentina for nearly eight years. After Elena’s death, grief and distance had weakened our relationship. We exchanged holiday messages and occasional photographs, but little more.
“Why didn’t you call me yesterday?”
“I tried. Patricia said you were in meetings and had asked her to gather information before your trip.”
I closed my eyes.
She had used my schedule, my routines, even my impatience with paperwork against me.
“Samuel, do not discuss anything else with her. And send me copies of every message she sent.”
“Is something wrong?”
I looked at the screens.
“Yes.”
I did not know how wrong yet.
After the call, I contacted the school.
The receptionist transferred me to Daniela’s teacher, Ms. Navarro.
I asked a simple question.
“Has Daniela seemed different lately?”
The teacher hesitated.
“She’s been quieter.”
“How long?”
“A few weeks.”
“Has she said anything about home?”
“Not directly. But she asked me something unusual last Tuesday.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What did she ask?”
“She wanted to know whether a child could be sent away if a new parent didn’t want her.”
For a moment, I could not breathe.
“She said that?”
“Yes. I asked why, but she told me it was for a story she was writing.”
Daniela often hid her fears inside stories.
She had done it after her mother died. Every tale had been about children searching for a house that remembered them.
I thanked the teacher and ended the call.
Then I sat with my face in my hands.
I had been living beneath the same roof as my daughters, yet they had not trusted me enough to tell me they were afraid.
Or perhaps they had tried.
I remembered Daniela asking whether the wedding date was certain.
Martina complaining of stomachaches whenever Patricia joined us for dinner.
Rosa beginning sentences with, “Sir, may I speak with you?” only to fall silent when Patricia entered.
The signs had been everywhere.
I had simply chosen the explanation that demanded the least from me.
I told myself the girls were adjusting.
I told myself Rosa was possessive.
I told myself Patricia was under pressure because of the wedding.
Every excuse had protected my comfort at the expense of my children.
At noon, Mateo returned.
He placed a tablet on the desk.
“I checked every access log,” he said.
“And?”
“No one from the security company contacted Rosa.”
“That doesn’t prove—”
“I’m not finished.”
His voice was colder than usual.
He opened a photograph.
It showed a section of wiring behind the surveillance console.
“One of the camera feeds was duplicated.”
I leaned closer.
“What does that mean?”
“Someone created a secondary viewing connection. Not through the main system. Through an old cable line that was supposed to be inactive.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet. But the signal leads to the staff wing.”
“Rosa’s room?”
“Near it.”
My stomach tightened.
Mateo swiped to another image.
“This is the service corridor outside the laundry room. The cable enters the wall here. It could run to Rosa’s room, the linen closet, or the old storage room.”
“So she may have been watching the cameras.”
“Possibly.”
“Which would explain the note.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you detect it before?”
“Because whoever connected it knew enough to avoid the digital system.”
I looked at him.
He met my gaze without flinching.
“I didn’t do it.”
“I believe you.”
The words came too late, but something in his expression softened.
“Thank you,” he said.
On the monitors, Patricia had gone upstairs.
Rosa was in the kitchen preparing lunch.
I made a decision.
“Stay here. Watch Patricia.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find out what Rosa knows.”
I used the underground passage connecting the surveillance room to the old wine cellar. The passage had been built by the mansion’s previous owner and was rarely used now.
From the cellar, I entered the service corridor.
The house sounded different when no one knew I was inside.
May you like
Every footstep seemed too loud.
Every door appeared to be listening.
