Chapter 2 - THE CAMERA THAT DID NOT BELONG TO MARCO
Marco ordered every exterior door sealed.
No one entered.
No one left.
His guards surrendered their phones and weapons to a security team that answered directly to him.
Isold watched each man place his gun on the marble.
Three appeared angry.
Two appeared confused.
Vincent Moretti appeared calm.
Vincent had served as Marco’s security chief for eleven years. He had protected Aurora during medical appointments, school visits, and the rare public events Marco permitted her to attend.
He was also the guard Isold had warned.
Marco pointed toward the concealed camera.
“Remove it.”
Vincent shook his head.
“I have never seen that device.”
Isold stepped beneath it.
“You installed the housing during the chandelier repair in November.”
Vincent laughed.
“You clean floors. Do not pretend you understand surveillance.”
Isold removed a small screwdriver from her apron pocket and climbed onto a chair.
Inside the housing, she found a wireless transmitter smaller than her thumb.
She placed it on the table.
“This device sends compressed video through the mansion’s secondary network.”
Marco looked at his security technician.
“Do we have a secondary network?”
The technician swallowed.
“It was installed for the garden sensors.”
“Who approved it?”
Vincent answered before the technician could.
“I did.”
Marco turned slowly.
Vincent did not move.
“For perimeter coverage,” he added.
Isold looked toward Aurora.
“The camera was angled toward her piano, the stairs, and the corridor leading to her bedroom.”
Marco’s neck muscles tightened.
“Why?”
Vincent folded his arms.
“Ask your maid. She seems to know everything.”
Marco faced Isold.
“Start talking.”
Aurora stood beside her, still gripping the baton.
Isold removed the faded identification tag from her neck and placed it on the table.
“My name is Isold Kane. I served fourteen years in a military rescue and intelligence unit. After leaving active service, I worked private recovery operations.”
“You became a maid?”
“I entered houses where armed men ignored women carrying laundry.”
Marco stared at her.
“Who hired you?”
“Your wife.”
The foyer became silent.
Aurora’s mother, Sofia Bellini, had died six years earlier when her vehicle left a mountain road during a storm.
The official report called it an accident.
Marco had never accepted that explanation.
“You never met Sofia,” he said.
“I met her eight months before she died.”
“Where?”
“Croatia.”
Marco’s expression changed.
Sofia had traveled there for a medical foundation conference. Marco’s intelligence reports said nothing unusual happened.
Isold continued.
“Men attempted to take her from a hotel garage. I was working security for another client. I intervened.”
“Why did she not tell me?”
“She believed the attackers came from inside your organization.”
Marco glanced toward Vincent.
Vincent’s face remained unreadable.
“Sofia hired me privately,” Isold said. “She wanted someone outside your command structure to investigate threats against Aurora.”
“Aurora was six.”
“She had already received two kidnapping threats.”
“I handled those.”
“You arrested men paid to deliver messages. You did not find the person funding them.”
Marco stepped closer.
“And you did?”
“I found payments moving through one of your construction companies.”
“Which one?”
“Bellini Atlantic.”
Marco’s eyes moved toward Vincent again.
Vincent supervised security contracts for that company.
Isold continued.
“Sofia planned to bring the evidence to you. She died before she could.”
Marco’s voice dropped.
“You are accusing someone in this house of murdering my wife.”
“I am telling you her brakes were disabled before the mountain road.”
The security technician stared at the floor.
Marco saw it.
“What do you know?”
The man began shaking.
“Nothing.”
Marco crossed the distance and seized the front of his shirt.
Isold stepped forward.
“Do not.”
Marco turned his rage on her.
“He knows something.”
“Then frightening him will make him repeat whatever he thinks keeps him alive.”
Marco released the technician.
The man collapsed into a chair.
Isold crouched before him.
“Who requested access to the secondary network?”
His eyes moved toward Vincent.
Vincent reached inside his jacket.
Isold moved first.
She struck his wrist with the edge of her hand. A compact pistol fell across the marble.
Aurora heard the metal slide.
She stepped behind a column without being told.
Isold kicked the weapon toward Marco.
The other guards raised their guns.
Marco pointed at Vincent.
“Do not kill him.”
Vincent’s face twisted.
“You are listening to a servant over the man who kept you alive for eleven years?”
Marco looked at the concealed camera.
“You watched my daughter.”
“I watched the house.”
“You reached for a gun.”
“Because she attacked me.”
Isold removed a black smartphone from inside her apron.
“I copied twelve weeks of transmissions from the hidden camera.”
Vincent’s confidence disappeared.
Marco held out his hand.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
Every guard tensed.
Isold remained calm.
“The file is encrypted. If I disappear, copies go to federal investigators and Sofia’s attorney.”
Marco stared at her.
“You entered my home prepared to destroy me.”
“I entered prepared to protect Aurora from whoever tried to turn your home into a cage.”
Aurora emerged from behind the column.
“Papa, listen to her.”
Marco looked at his blind daughter standing without assistance in the center of a room filled with armed men.
For the first time, he understood why Isold had placed a baton in her hands.
The threat was not beyond the gates.
May you like
It had always been inside them.
Continue to the next part: A hidden recording reveals that Aurora was not the only target, and Marco learns why Sofia trusted Isold more than her own husband.
