. CHAPTER 6 — Claire’s Voice
The archived footage was dated six years earlier.
It showed the same hallway outside the private dining room, dimmer then, with older wallpaper and fewer cameras. Claire appeared on screen carrying a tray of coffee cups. She was young, thin, and trying too hard not to look frightened.
Sebastian followed her into the frame.
At first there was no sound, only motion. His hand closing around her wrist. Her pulling away. His smile disappearing. Then the system loaded audio from a secondary mic, crackling but clear enough.
“You think anyone will believe you?” Sebastian’s recorded voice said.
Claire’s recorded voice shook. “I’m pregnant.”
The room went completely still.
Nora heard Lily inhale sharply beside her. She wanted to cover the child’s ears, to protect her from the ugliness of the truth, but Lily was already living inside its consequences.
On screen, Sebastian stepped closer to Claire. “Then disappear.”
The footage jumped to another date. Claire in the service entrance, crying into her phone. “Miss Nora is kind,” she whispered. “If anything happens, maybe she’ll help my baby one day.”
Nora covered her mouth. She had been away at school then. She had never known Claire had said her name.
Another clip appeared: Arthur in the security room, ordering a technician to wipe “all irrelevant service footage.” Evelyn stood behind him, calm as ice. Sebastian paced in the corner.
“Make sure nothing connects her to us,” Evelyn said.
Arthur replied, “We’ve protected him this long. We’re not letting a maid ruin thirty years of work.”
Thirty years.
The phrase from the video title, the family legend, the rotten foundation of everything.
The guests began whispering, but their whispers no longer sounded polite. They sounded like witnesses.
Lily’s face crumpled. “He knew?”
Nora sank to her knees before the child. “I’m so sorry.”
Lily’s little hands balled in the shawl. “My mom said my dad was important.”
Nora looked at Sebastian.
He had stopped shouting. That was what frightened her most. He was calculating again, searching for the door in every disaster his parents had ever opened for him.
Arthur spoke first. “This footage is illegally accessed. It proves nothing.”
The doctor stood. “It proves enough for me to call the police.”
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This time, when Arthur reached for his phone, it was not to erase evidence.
It was because he knew someone else already had.
