Chapter 5 - The Backup Recording
Daniel arrived with two members of Victor’s security team.
The mansion gates had locked automatically.
Serena and Mercer were still somewhere on the property.
Victor ordered Daniel to search the house.
Then he carried a laptop into his study.
Lily sat beside him with Oliver asleep against her shoulder.
Victor accessed the encrypted backup server.
The missing fifty-three minutes appeared.
He clicked play.
The recording began at 2:14 p.m.
Lily was visible leaving through the kitchen door for lunch.
Thirty seconds later, Serena entered the nursery.
Oliver was playing beside his toy chest.
Serena knelt.
For a moment, she looked gentle.
Then Mercer appeared through the closet.
Victor stopped breathing.
The hidden passage.
Mercer placed a medical bag on the floor.
Oliver immediately began crying.
Serena grabbed him.
The toddler fought desperately.
Mercer filled a syringe.
Lily covered her mouth.
Victor’s hands curled into fists.
Mercer injected something into a small drinking bottle.
Serena tried giving it to Oliver.
He pushed it away.
Then something unexpected happened.
Oliver screamed one word.
“Li-Ly!”
Lily began crying silently beside Victor.
Victor kept watching.
Serena slapped the bottle onto the dresser.
“She’s ruining everything.”
Mercer said something too quietly for the camera microphone.
Victor increased the volume.
“Once she’s gone, he’ll adapt.”
Serena paced angrily.
“He won’t even sleep unless she’s here.”
Mercer answered.
“That attachment is useful.”
Serena stared at him.
“How?”
Mercer leaned closer.
“Because if anything happens to him, everyone will blame the nanny.”
Victor froze.
Lily stopped breathing.
The video continued.
Serena asked.
“How much longer?”
Mercer replied.
“Not long.”
Then he pointed toward Oliver.
“Another few weeks of symptoms.”
“Then what?”
Mercer smiled.
“Then Victor will believe his son inherited the same neurological disorder that killed his mother.”
Victor slammed the laptop shut.
The sound made Oliver wake.
Lily immediately rocked him.
Victor stared straight ahead.
His wife, Claire, had died seventeen months earlier.
Doctors had concluded that a rare neurological condition caused sudden respiratory failure.
Victor had never questioned it.
Until now.
His phone rang.
Daniel.
“We found Mercer.”
“Where?”
“Garage.”
“And Serena?”
A pause.
“She’s gone.”
Victor stood.
“What?”
“We searched every room.”
“The gates are locked.”
“I know.”
Victor looked toward the hidden passage.
Then he remembered Serena’s private dressing room.
The service corridors.
The old mansion plans.
There might be another exit.
Daniel continued.
“Victor, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Mercer had a passport.”
Victor’s stomach tightened.
“Whose?”
“Oliver’s.”
Victor looked at his sleeping son.
Serena had not merely been experimenting on the boy.
May you like
She had been preparing to take him somewhere.
And Victor suddenly wondered whether his fiancée had ever planned to marry him at all.
