Chapter 3 - MY NAME IN THE SECURITY LOG
I spent four hours in an interview room at the county sheriff’s office.
I was not arrested.
I was not allowed to leave until my statement, clothes, phone, and movements were documented.
The mansion’s cameras showed me entering the ballroom alone.
The corridor camera failed seven minutes later.
My access badge opened the hidden service passage and my staff cabinet.
I had never known the passage existed.
William hired an attorney for me. The Sterling household suspended me before midnight.
Isabella went to a private hospital for bruising caused by William’s kick. Her lawyer filed for a protective order and emergency custody restrictions.
William was allowed to remain with Ethan only under supervision while the court reviewed the violence and conflicting claims.
The next morning, Detective Lena Brooks showed me the badge records.
“Could anyone use your card?”
“I keep it clipped inside my apron.”
“Have you ever lost it?”
“For twenty minutes last week. It was returned to the laundry desk.”
“Who found it?”
“No name was recorded.”
The security office claimed badges could not be copied.
Adrian Cole signed that statement.
Ethan’s forensic interview revealed little. He said Isabella told him they were playing a game and that he must stay hidden until she returned.
When he tried to leave, the panel would not open.
He remembered hearing a man’s voice through the vent.
He would not identify it.
That afternoon my timecard from the east wing was verified by three cameras and two coworkers.
I had been forty rooms away when my badge opened the passage.
The log could not be true.
Detective Brooks agreed.
Then she showed me something worse.
The hidden room appeared on no current floor plan.
It had been removed from estate records twelve years earlier.
The alteration was approved by William’s late father and countersigned by the estate security office.
May you like
Someone had preserved that room in secret for more than a decade.
And Adrian Cole had worked at the mansion for thirteen years.
