CHAP 5 — The Recording
The recording played louder than I expected.
Victoria’s voice bounced off the stone driveway, the iron gates, the parked cars, the silent security guards.
“They’ll be sent away once I marry him. I won’t raise another woman’s children.”
The triplets stopped crying for one shocked second.
Richard turned to Victoria.
She lifted one hand.
“Richard, that is taken out of context.”
I pressed the button again.
The next clip played.
“The school in Switzerland can take all three by September. Once I marry him, I’ll be household guardian in practice.”
Richard’s face drained of color.
Victoria lunged toward me.
A guard stepped between us.
“Give me that,” she hissed.
I stood, keeping the girls behind me.
“No.”
Richard’s voice was low.
“Victoria.”
She turned to him instantly, trying to recover.
“Darling, you know how staff twist things. I was discussing options. Therapeutic options. You said yourself the girls needed stability.”
“I never said I wanted them sent away.”
“You travel. You grieve. You don’t see how unhealthy this attachment to Emily has become.”
Lucy stepped forward, tears on her cheeks.
“You told me Daddy needed a real family.”
Richard looked down at her.
“What?”
Regina’s voice shook with anger.
“She said we make you sad.”
Valerie whispered, “She said boarding school has rules for girls nobody wants.”
Something inside Richard broke visibly.
Not loudly.
No dramatic collapse.
His face changed the way a locked door changes when the key finally turns.
He turned back to Victoria.
“Is that true?”
Victoria’s eyes flicked from him to the guards, to me, to the girls, calculating which lie still had room.
“You are emotional right now,” she said.
Wrong answer.
Richard stepped forward and grabbed her left hand.
The diamond ring flashed in the morning light.
He pulled it from her finger so violently she gasped.
“You came into my house and planned to erase my daughters?”
“Richard, stop. You’re embarrassing me.”
His laugh was cold.
“Embarrassing you?”
He held up the ring.
“You framed the woman who raised my children after their mother died.”
“She is an employee!”
“She was protecting them from you.”
Victoria’s mask finally cracked.
Her mouth twisted.
“You think this nanny loves them? She loves the access. She loves being needed. I was trying to make your daughters strong.”
Regina shouted, “We are strong!”
Richard flinched at the fury in his child’s voice.
Good.
He needed to hear what he had nearly lost.
I pulled one more file from the brooch memory.
Victoria’s voice again.
“Put the Rolex in the canvas bag. The upstairs cameras are down. Richard will believe theft before he believes the nanny over me.”
Richard went completely still.
The guard beside the gate looked at me.
I nodded.
“Yes,” I said. “There’s more.”
Richard turned toward his head of security.
“Lock down the house. Preserve every camera feed, every access log, every staff entry record. No one leaves.”
Victoria whispered, “You can’t do this to me.”
Richard looked at the engagement ring in his palm.
May you like
Then dropped it onto the pavement at her feet.
“I just did.”
