Victor pressed play. Her own voice filled the foyer: “You think anyone will believe a cheap nanny over me?” Then Ethan’s scream. Then Lily: “You’re breaking his arm.” Victor stopped the recording. The mansion became perfectly still.
Dr. Moreno rushed in and examined the baby: possible fracture, immediate hospital imaging. Victor carried his son toward the door, then stopped beside Lily. “You’re coming.” Serena snapped: “She is fired.” Victor turned, and for the first time anger showed — not wild, controlled. “You do not give orders in this house anymore.”
“Lock the gates,” Victor told Marco. He walked out with Ethan. Then a housemaid whispered from the staircase: “Sir… this wasn’t the first time.” And suddenly the recorder was no longer the worst evidence in the mansion.
THE OLD FRACTURE
The maid was Rosa Delgado. At the hospital, X-rays confirmed Ethan’s forearm was fractured — and revealed something worse: an old fracture in his left wrist, healed about three weeks earlier, that nobody had ever reported.
Rosa finally spoke. Three weeks ago, she said, Serena had been carrying Ethan after he knocked over her jewelry box; afterward his wrist swelled, and Rosa said nothing because Serena had threatened to have immigration take Rosa’s undocumented husband. Rosa had also noticed Serena putting drops into Ethan’s milk every evening before Victor came home — matching the baby’s mysterious breathing episodes. Rosa had hidden a suspicious medicine vial in the old nursery, sealed since Elena’s death.
Police arrived at the mansion, but Serena walked free that night — her lawyer got there first. Victor ordered the nursery sealed, but Marco reported the door had already been forced open and the room cleaned out. Someone had gotten there first.
THE EMPTY NURSERY
The nursery had been ransacked; the cabinet panel where Rosa hid the vial was gone. Only four people held master keys: Victor, Marco, the head housekeeper — and Beatrice Montigue, Serena’s mother, who had visited that afternoon and left thirty minutes before Victor arrived.