Chapter 3: What the Employment Record Said
Daniel put the phone face-down on the side table.
He kept his hand on it.
"Everyone out," he said.
The two household staff who had gathered in the doorway retreated without a word.
Lauren didn't move.
"I said everyone."
"I'm your wife, Daniel."
"I know what you are." He finally looked at her.
"Out."
Lauren left.
But she didn't go far.
Maya heard her heels stop just beyond the doorway — close enough to listen.
Maya shifted Noah in her arms.
He was conscious but pale, his breathing shallow.
She needed to get him to a hospital.
She had been saying so for ten minutes and no one had listened.
"Daniel.
He needs a doctor."
"In a moment."
"Not in a moment.
Now."
That made him turn.
Something in her voice — flat, certain, not asking — reached him in a way that nothing else had.
He crossed the foyer and crouched in front of Noah.
"Hey, buddy." His voice changed completely.
Softer.
Frightened in a different way.
"Where does it hurt?"
"My arm," Noah said.
"And my back."
"Okay." Daniel stood.
"I'll call Dr.
Reeves."
"Call an ambulance," Maya said.
"Dr.
Reeves is Lauren's doctor."
Daniel stared at her.
"He's been Lauren's family physician for eleven years," Maya said quietly.
"I looked it up two years ago when she first brought him in to examine Noah after his fever.
I didn't say anything then.
I'm saying it now."
Daniel pulled out his phone — the same phone — and dialed.
Not Dr.
Reeves.
Maya heard the dispatcher answer.
While he spoke, Maya looked at the frozen frame still displayed on the security monitor across the foyer.
The man in the image was standing near the base of the east staircase.
Not the main staircase.
The east one — the one that led directly to the late Mrs.
Hargrove's private sitting room.
The timestamp read 11:42 p.m.
Claire Hargrove had been found unresponsive at 11:58 p.m.
the same night.
Sixteen minutes.
Maya had never been shown the security footage from that night.
No one had asked her about it.
She had been told it was a heart condition.
She had been told it was sudden.
She had been told a lot of things.
She looked at the name she had read on Daniel's phone screen before he turned it over.
Victor Sloane.
She had seen that name once before.
Not on an employment record.
On a small card tucked inside an envelope that had arrived for Lauren three months after Claire d*ed — an envelope Maya had accidentally received with the household mail and placed on Lauren's desk without opening.
The card had slipped out as she set it down.
She hadn't read it.
She had looked away immediately.
But she had seen the name.
The ambulance arrived in eleven minutes.
As the paramedics came through the front doors, Lauren reappeared in the hallway.
She had changed her expression completely — composed now, concerned, the perfect worried stepmother.
"Is he going to be alright?" she asked the nearest paramedic.
Noah turned his face away from her and pressed it against Maya's shoulder.
That small movement — six years old, one arm hurt, back aching — said everything.
Maya climbed into the ambulance with him.
Daniel got in on the other side.
Lauren stood on the front steps and watched them go.
May you like
As the doors closed, Maya saw her pull out her own phone.
She was already dialing before the ambulance reached the gate.
