Chapter 6 - The Maid Who Wasn’t Supposed to Know
Norah didn't turn.
She called Gideon.
Not with her voice.
She pressed his emergency contact button.
Arthur arrived twenty seconds later.
They found a tiny camera hidden inside the carved molding.
It had transmitted live.
Someone had been watching Gideon for weeks.
Samuel denied knowing about it.
Gideon ordered him confined to the estate until the investigation ended.
Samuel was furious.
“You imprison your own family because a maid is frightened?”
Gideon's response was quiet.
“I’m keeping you here because you called her a maid as though that made her fear less important.”
Norah remembered those words.
Nobody had defended her that way before.
The investigation uncovered eleven cameras.
One faced the medicine cabinet.
One watched the kitchen.
One watched Arthur’s office.
Whoever planned Gideon’s decline had studied every routine.
Then Elias found another irregularity.
Gideon’s original prescription records had been accessed from a terminal registered to Samuel’s charitable medical foundation.
Samuel insisted the foundation employed hundreds.
Gideon wanted proof.
Norah wanted something simpler.
She asked Samuel what Gideon drank for breakfast.
He said he didn't know.
She asked whether he had ever seen the red tonic.
No.
Then she showed him a photograph from six months earlier.
A family breakfast.
Samuel sat beside Gideon.
The same red drink was on the table.
His lie was small.
That made it important.
Arthur searched Samuel’s luggage.
Inside a hidden compartment was a second phone.
One message remained undeleted.
Continue until cardiac instability. No sudden changes.
Samuel said the phone wasn't his.
Nobody believed him.
Yet the sender was identified only as D.
Dominic?
Gideon refused to say it aloud.
Norah saw the possibility hurting him.
That night Dominic finally contacted them.
Not by phone.
He appeared at the gate.
Alive.
Gideon watched the security monitor as his younger brother stood beneath the camera.
Two years of grief vanished into something more complicated.
Arthur opened the gate.
Dominic entered unarmed.
Gideon met him in the library.
Neither brother embraced.
“You let me bury you,” Gideon said.
“You would have died if I hadn't.”
“I nearly died anyway.”
Dominic looked at Norah.
“You're the reason he didn't.”
Then he turned toward Samuel.
“You.”
Samuel stood.
Dominic threw a folder onto the table.
“Tell him.”
Samuel's face changed.
Gideon opened the folder.
Bank records.
Medical invoices.
Security access logs.
All pointed toward Samuel.
Then Dominic said something nobody expected.
“He didn't plan to kill you.”
Gideon looked up.
Dominic's next words were worse.
“He was trying to keep you sick.”
“Why?”
Dominic looked toward the closed library door.
“Because the person who wanted you dead was already inside the house.”
A knock sounded.
Three slow taps.
Arthur checked the camera.
His face drained.
“Gideon.”
“Who is it?”
Arthur turned the monitor toward him.
Dr. Mercer stood outside.
May you like
Beside him was Caleb Voss.
And Caleb was holding Gideon’s missing medication chart.
