Chapter 5 - The Girls Who Were Watching
The nightmares began two nights later.
Josie woke first.
She came into the guest room at 3:11 a.m., carrying her stuffed rabbit and crying without making a sound.
I pulled back the blanket.
“Come here, baby.”
She climbed beside me, cold and shaking.
“He found us,” she whispered.
“It was a dream.”
“He was in the kitchen.”
I held her close.
“Your father cannot get in here.”
“How do you know?”
I did not.
That was the truth I hated most.
The locks were better. The building had security. Adrian had men downstairs and cameras in the hallway.
But Travis had found us in a crowded supermarket with a restraining order between us.
Paper failed.
Doors failed.
People failed.
Eventually Josie fell asleep against me. I stayed awake, staring at the ceiling until I heard tiny footsteps again.
Willa stood in the doorway.
“I had a bad dream too,” she announced, trying to sound brave.
“Come here.”
She climbed onto the other side of the bed.
“Was Daddy mad because we got ice cream?”
“No.”
“Because Mommy left him?”
“No.”
“Because I yelled at him once?”
I pulled her close.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Your father’s anger belongs to him. It is never your job to fix it, understand?”
Her face crumpled.
“But he’s my daddy.”
“I know.”
That was the tragedy of it.
Children loved people before they understood whether those people were safe.
The next morning, Adrian found all three of us asleep tangled together in the guest bed.
He stood in the doorway, silent.
Then he quietly left.
Twenty minutes later, breakfast arrived: pancakes shaped like stars, strawberries, hot chocolate, and a note from Luca.
Emergency anti-nightmare breakfast. Sprinkles included.
Willa looked at the note.
“Luca is nice.”
“Yes,” Josie said softly. “But Adrian is scary.”
I glanced toward the hallway.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because he doesn’t smile,” Willa said.
Josie lowered her voice. “And people are scared of him.”
Children noticed everything.
Before I could answer, Adrian walked into the kitchen. He had clearly heard at least part of it.
His expression stayed composed, but something in his posture changed.
Willa looked embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Adrian crouched beside her.
“You do not have to be sorry for being honest.”
She blinked.
“Are you scary?”
He considered the question seriously.
“To some people.”
“Are you scary to us?”
His eyes moved to me briefly, then back to the girls.
“I never want to be.”
Willa studied him for a long moment.
Then she held out a strawberry.
“Do you want one?”
Adrian looked at the strawberry like it was a legal document he had not prepared for.
Luca, standing near the coffee machine, nearly choked.
Adrian took it.
“Thank you.”
Later that day, I met with Meredith and a forensic accountant. They explained that Victor Lennox had built a network using companies connected to Moretti Development projects. Adrian’s signatures had been copied on several approvals.
“Why target him?” I asked.
“Control,” Meredith said. “If Lennox could make it look like Adrian approved the fraud, he could force him out of the company—or destroy him.”
“And Travis?”
“A desperate employee who could be bought.”
The investigator slid another document toward me.
A copy of an agreement dated eighteen months earlier.
My signature was forged beneath a clause granting Travis control over a small trust account.
“What is this?” I asked.
Meredith’s expression tightened.
“An account holding money from an insurance policy.”
I stared at the page.
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
“Yes,” Meredith said gently. “She left you a policy. It appears Travis discovered it after you married.”
The account had contained $72,000.
Every dollar was gone.
I felt the room shrink.
All those years of struggling.
All the double shifts.
All the nights I skipped meals so the girls could eat.
And Travis had stolen the one thing my mother had managed to leave me.
When I returned to the apartment, Adrian found me sitting on the balcony, crying silently while the city glittered below.
He did not ask permission.
He simply sat in the chair beside me.
“I should have known,” I said.
“No.”
“I should have checked the accounts. The taxes. Everything.”
“You were surviving,” he said. “That is not the same as failing.”
I covered my face.
“He took everything.”
Adrian’s voice was quiet.
“No. He took money. He took time. He took peace.”
I looked at him.
“But he did not take you. And he did not take your daughters.”
His phone rang before I could respond.
He looked at the screen.
Then his face hardened.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Travis sent a video.”
He turned the phone toward me.
The recording showed my daughters’ old preschool playground.
And Travis’s voice spoke over the image.
May you like
“You can hide behind Moretti all you want, Camille. But eventually, your girls have to go back to school.”
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