Chapter 11 - The Woman in the Security Footage
“Amelia.”
I grabbed the lamp.
The door opened.
Bianca stepped inside.
I almost threw it anyway.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving your life.”
She locked the door behind her.
Then she pulled a tiny camera from the smoke detector.
The same model used to film me before.
“You?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Because Margaret did the same thing to me.”
Bianca had recognized the method.
The photographs.
The camera.
The psychological pressure.
But she had discovered something else.
Margaret wasn’t operating alone.
Someone inside the estate had been replacing cameras before Marco inspected rooms.
Bianca had followed the person.
“Who?”
She handed me her phone.
Security footage.
A woman entering my bedroom.
Dark coat.
Baseball cap.
She looked toward the camera.
My stomach turned.
My mother.
Again.
I confronted her.
This time she didn’t deny it.
She had planted the camera.
But not for Margaret.
For my father.
That made no sense.
Until she showed me the recording device.
Inside was a hidden encrypted drive Thomas had given her seventeen years earlier.
He told her never to activate it unless Crown resurfaced.
The camera was camouflage.
The drive contained his final testimony.
We watched.
My father appeared on screen.
Younger.
Tired.
Alive.
“Amelia, if you’re seeing this, I failed to keep this away from you.”
I cried before he finished the sentence.
He explained Crown.
Margaret.
Carlo.
Vittorio.
Everything.
Then came the final revelation.
Thomas had not created the ownership transfer to make me rich.
He did it to destroy Crown.
On my thirty-fifth birthday, I would gain legal authority over the shell companies.
With one signature, I could dissolve them and release their internal records to investigators.
Margaret needed me dead—or legally controlled—before then.
Ethan’s engagement had been the plan.
“I’m sorry,” Mom whispered.
“You let me date him.”
“I didn’t know who his mother was until after you became engaged.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Thomas made me promise.”
I shook my head.
“Everyone keeps protecting me by lying.”
Mom cried.
“I know.”
For once, nobody defended it.
Lorenzo entered only after I invited him.
I showed him the video.
When it ended, he said, “What do you want to do?”
Not what should we do.
What do you want?
“End Crown.”
He nodded.
We created a plan.
A public wedding announcement.
My thirty-fifth birthday.
The Duca estate.
Margaret would believe marriage gave Lorenzo control over Crown.
She would come.
Elena hated the risk.
Marco hated it more.
Rosa loved it.
“Finally,” she said, “a wedding with entertainment.”
I stared at her.
“You need hobbies.”
“I have hobbies.”
“Manipulation isn’t a hobby.”
“At my age, everything is.”
The plan moved forward.
Then Ethan disappeared from the hospital.
No guards saw him leave.
His room contained blood.
A broken IV.
And one message written across the mirror.
SHE KNOWS ABOUT THE WEDDING.
That evening, Lorenzo’s phone rang.
Ethan was crying.
“Don’t marry Amelia.”
“Where are you?”
“She has me.”
“Who?”
But we knew.
Ethan whispered one final sentence.
“She isn’t coming to stop the wedding.”
May you like
A gun clicked near the phone.
“She’s already inside the house...”
