Chapter 6 - The Camera That Went Blind
Marissa collapsed before I could reach her.
She was alive.
Barely.
Vincent called a private physician while Gabriel ordered the estate locked down.
Marissa had a cut above her eyebrow and bruises around both wrists.
When she woke, she panicked at the sight of Gabriel.
“No hospital.”
“You need one,” I said.
“No police.”
Gabriel moved closer.
“Who did this?”
Marissa looked at him.
“Your uncle.”
“Carmine?”
“He didn’t hold me himself.”
“Who did?”
“I never saw their faces.”
She had discovered the medication scheme six weeks earlier.
Carmine paid a staff pharmacist to substitute sedatives.
When Marissa confronted him, he offered her money.
She refused.
Then someone broke into her apartment.
She ran.
The airport car had been staged.
For weeks, she hid with a cousin.
But she kept watching the estate remotely through an old security login.
That was how she saw me.
And how she knew the Thursday pattern continued.
“Why come back?”
Marissa looked at Gabriel.
“Because Carmine changed the plan.”
“What plan?”
“He doesn’t need you declared incompetent anymore.”
Gabriel went still.
“He found the trust.”
She nodded.
“And the second beneficiary.”
M.M.
“Who?”
Marissa swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Then she told us something worse.
The west-hall camera was not malfunctioning.
Someone with administrator access disabled it every Thursday.
Only three people had that access.
Gabriel.
Carmine.
Vincent.
Everyone looked at Vincent.
He removed his gun and put it on the table.
Then his phone.
Then his keys.
“Search everything.”
Gabriel’s expression revealed nothing.
We did.
On Vincent’s laptop we found security logs.
The camera shutdown orders came from his credentials.
But the login location was not his office.
It was the estate’s underground server room.
On Thursdays, Vincent was usually with Gabriel.
Someone had cloned his access.
We checked the server room.
Behind one rack, I noticed scratches on the floor.
We moved it.
There was a narrow door.
Beyond it was an old service passage.
It led directly to Carmine’s guest suite.
That should have settled the question.
It did not.
Because inside the passage we found a burner phone.
Its contact list contained only three numbers.
Carmine.
Marissa.
And mine.
I had never seen the phone.
Someone had been monitoring me before I arrived.
“How?” I whispered.
Gabriel stared at my number.
Then Vincent found an email on the device.
Sent two months earlier.
SUBJECT: REPLACEMENT CAREGIVER.
Attached was my agency application.
My photograph.
My résumé.
My mother’s address.
Even Pickles’s veterinary records.
I felt physically sick.
“I wasn’t randomly assigned here.”
“No,” Gabriel said.
Someone had selected me.
The question was why.
We searched deeper.
There was one audio file.
Gabriel played it.
Carmine’s voice filled the room.
“The Bennett woman is ideal. Financial pressure. No influential family. No connections. If anything happens, everyone will believe she made a medication error.”
My knees weakened.
I had not been hired to care for Gabriel.
I had been brought there to take the blame for his death.
Then another voice answered Carmine.
A voice we all recognized.
The recording continued.
“Make sure Hannah never discovers why her mother knew Maria Moretti.”
I stared at Gabriel.
“My mother?”
He stared back.
Then my phone rang.
MOM.
I answered immediately.
But a man spoke instead.
“Hannah, your mother has something Gabriel needs.”
May you like
Behind him, I heard my mother crying.
Then he said the address...
