CHAPTER 3 — THE VIDEO NOBODY REMEMBERED
CHAPTER 3 — THE VIDEO NOBODY REMEMBERED
Detective Benson spent the next two days collecting statements.
Every employee repeated the same story.
They hadn't seen anything.
They hadn't heard anything.
No one wanted to risk losing a job that paid twice the market rate.
Everyone...
Except one child.
Claire sat on the floor beside Lily with a box of crayons.
"What did you draw?"
"The stairs."
"And these people?"
"The grandma."
"The pretty lady."
"And this one?"
"My bunny."
Claire smiled.
"Bunny?"
"He was watching too."
Children rarely understood the importance of evidence.
But they almost never lied consistently.
Lily described the same sequence three different times.
Every detail matched.
Vivien smiled.
Margaret turned away.
Then...
Two hands.
One shove.
One scream.
Nathan searched the estate's old maintenance records.
Most surveillance cameras had been upgraded years earlier.
Except one.
His late father had insisted on installing a private recorder inside the library after several valuable antiques disappeared.
The system had been forgotten.
No one had checked it in years.
The hard drive still worked.
Hours of empty footage rolled past.
Then...
The afternoon before Margaret's fall.
Vivien entered the library alone.
She removed papers from a locked drawer.
Then spoke softly to herself.
"Tomorrow everything changes."
Nathan froze.
She smiled directly toward the old clock.
"I've waited three years."
His stomach tightened.
She wasn't speaking to anyone.
She was celebrating.
That evening Nathan confronted her.
"What were you doing in Father's library yesterday?"
Vivien barely blinked.
"Looking for wedding invitations."
"There aren't invitations in his desk."
"I must have remembered wrong."
Another perfect answer.
Another effortless lie.
Nathan smiled politely.
May you like
Inside...
Something broke forever.
