Chapter 4 - The Security Archive
Victoria Kensington was not allowed back into the estate.
At least, that was what Leo told everyone.
Her belongings would be collected by security. Her wedding dress fittings would be canceled. Her name would be removed from the household authorization system. Her access to Leo’s vehicles, accounts, private events, and staff would end immediately.
It sounded final.
But I had lived long enough to understand that dangerous people did not disappear simply because someone told them to leave.
Especially not people who had spent months building a place inside someone else’s life.
Lily returned home from the hospital the next afternoon.
The doctor said she would recover, but stress could trigger another attack. She needed rest, familiar routines, and above all, to feel safe.
Leo heard that last part several times.
He heard it from the doctor.
From the nurse.
From me.
And, eventually, from Lily.
That night, he sat beside her bed while I changed the sheets and placed her favorite stuffed rabbit beside her pillow.
“Daddy?” Lily asked.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Is Victoria gone?”
Leo looked at me.
I stopped moving.
He looked back at Lily.
“Yes.”
“For forever?”
He paused.
That pause broke something inside me.
Children noticed pauses.
They noticed when adults used soft words to hide hard truths.
Leo reached for Lily’s hand.
“She will not hurt you again.”
Lily studied his face.
Then she nodded.
“Okay.”
It was not forgiveness.
It was exhaustion.
She fell asleep minutes later.
When I stepped into the hallway, Leo was waiting.
“Marcus found something,” he said.
His voice was low.
I looked toward Lily’s closed door.
“About Victoria?”
He nodded.
“The security archive.”
I knew the Rossi estate had cameras. Everyone knew that. There were cameras at the gates, in the hallways, around the grounds, and outside the service entrances.
But Leo’s private security system was something else.
Marcus led us to a room beneath the west wing that I had never seen before. It had no windows, no decoration, and enough screens to make it look like a small intelligence center.
Rows of monitors flickered across the walls.
Dates.
Times.
Camera angles.
Audio files.
Marcus stood beside a desk with a laptop open.
“We found gaps in the recordings,” he said. “Someone manually disabled several interior camera feeds on specific dates.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed.
“Who had authorization?”
“Only you, me, and Miss Kensington.”
My stomach turned.
Marcus clicked a folder.
The first video began.
It showed the upstairs hallway from two months earlier.
Lily was standing outside Leo’s office, holding a drawing.
Victoria approached her.
The audio was faint but clear enough.
“What is that?” Victoria asked.
“A picture for Daddy.”
“He’s working.”
“I know. I’ll be quiet.”
Victoria crouched in front of her.
“Your father does not like interruptions, Lily.”
“He likes my pictures.”
Victoria smiled.
But even on a grainy screen, I could see it was not a kind smile.
“He only says that because he feels sorry for you.”
Lily’s face changed.
I looked away.
Leo did not.
Marcus played another clip.
Victoria in the dining room, speaking to the cook.
“No desserts for Lily this week,” she said. “She needs discipline.”
Another clip.
Victoria standing near the staircase while Lily cried because she had spilled juice on the carpet.
“You always make everything difficult,” Victoria told her.
Another.
Victoria entering Lily’s room while Leo was away.
She removed family photographs from the child’s nightstand. She placed them in a drawer.
“Your mother is gone,” she said. “And your father will move on. You should learn to do the same.”
My hand covered my mouth.
Leo stood perfectly still.
Too still.
Marcus hesitated before opening the next folder.
“There’s more,” he said.
The next recording was from three weeks earlier.
Victoria sat in the drawing room with a man I recognized vaguely from society magazines: Graham Weller, her brother.
He was forty, sharp-faced, and known for being the kind of investor who appeared around wealthy families after tragedies.
The audio was clearer.
“She’s getting worse,” Graham said.
“Lily?” Victoria asked.
“No. Leo.”
Victoria poured herself wine.
“He’s distracted. He has been ever since the girl started acting out.”
“She’s seven.”
“She knows exactly what she is doing.”
Graham leaned forward.
“You need him to sign the trust amendment before the wedding.”
“He will.”
“And the child?”
Victoria’s expression turned cold.
“Once we’re married, Leo will understand that Lily needs structure. A boarding program. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere she cannot interfere.”
The room felt like it had lost oxygen.
Leo’s hands curled into fists.
Marcus continued the recording.
Graham said, “And if he refuses?”
Victoria gave a soft laugh.
“Then I will make sure he believes the girl is unstable.”
I heard myself gasp.
On the screen, Victoria leaned closer to her brother.
“Leo is powerful, but he has one weakness. He cannot stand chaos. If Lily becomes chaos, he will remove her himself.”
The video ended.
Nobody spoke.
The hum of the machines sounded louder than before.
Leo walked toward the screen.
For a moment, I thought he might break it.
Instead, he placed one hand on the desk.
His knuckles were white.
“She planned this,” he said.
Marcus nodded. “For months.”
“She planned to take Lily from me.”
“Yes.”
“And I let her into this house.”
Marcus did not answer.
Neither did I.
Because sometimes the worst pain was not what another person did to you.
It was the realization that you had ignored every warning because you wanted to believe the lie.
Leo turned to me.
His eyes were dark.
“You knew,” he said.
I swallowed.
“I suspected.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
There it was.
The question I had feared.
I looked down at my bandaged fingers.
“Because I was afraid.”
His jaw tightened.
“Of Victoria?”
“Yes.”
“And of me?”
I did not want to answer.
But he deserved the truth.
“Yes.”
Leo looked away.
I continued quietly.
“You are Leo Rossi. People are afraid of you before they meet you. Your staff never knows whether they can speak honestly. Victoria told everyone she was becoming your wife. She made us believe that if we upset her, we upset you.”
He closed his eyes.
“You should have come to me.”
“I should have,” I said. “But you should have made it possible.”
The words hung between us.
Marcus looked down.
I expected Leo to explode.
Instead, he exhaled slowly.
“You’re right.”
I stared at him.
Leo Rossi did not look like a man accustomed to admitting fault.
Yet there he stood in a surveillance room, surrounded by proof that he had failed his daughter, and he said it again.
“You’re right.”
Then Marcus’s phone rang.
He listened for ten seconds.
His face changed.
“What?” Leo asked.
Marcus looked at him.
“Victoria is gone.”
Leo’s expression hardened.
“She was under guard.”
“She attacked one of the guards with a broken glass bottle during the transfer. She got into a car outside the property. We’re tracking the vehicle now.”
I felt cold all over.
“Where would she go?” I asked.
Leo looked at the screen.
At the image of Victoria smiling while she planned to destroy Lily’s life.
Then he said the words that made my stomach drop.
May you like
“Somewhere she can still hurt us.”
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