What the Camera Didn't See
Chapter 02 - What the Camera Didn't See
Dominic did not send Sophie and Emma home that night.
Outside the west windows, the gardeners had already begun bringing in the white rose arrangements before the overnight chill. Dominic watched them through the glass. He had spent years learning how to notice suspicious movements in crowded rooms. Yet he had missed the one person in his house who knew to be afraid of a stranger near the fountain. That failure felt embarrassingly personal.
He didn't tell them they were prisoners, either. He asked the cook to make grilled cheese sandwiches, offered Emma the guest apartment near the kitchen courtyard, and instructed Marco to find out what had happened outside. Emma refused twice before accepting, and even then only after she had called the woman who usually watched Sophie in the evenings.
“Her name's Mrs. Alvarez,” Emma explained. “She'll worry.”
“Then tell her exactly where you are.”
Emma watched him over the rim of a coffee cup. “You're not going to take my phone?”
“Why would I?”
She looked embarrassed. “No reason.”
She remembered a landlord who had once asked to see her messages "for everyone's safety" after a stranger started leaving notes at their building. She had refused and lost the apartment a month later when the lease was not renewed. It was no longer easy for her to hear a powerful man offer help without also wondering what he might expect in return.
He did not believe her, but he let the answer stand. When the coffee went cold, he brought her fresh water instead of asking questions she wasn't ready to answer.
In the guest apartment, Sophie was given a clean nightgown and a toothbrush. She insisted on taking the pink headband Dominic had worn. When she fell asleep, it lay beside her pillow like a peculiar little trophy.
Dominic watched from the doorway, then returned to the security office. Marco had washed off his polish but missed one streak on his thumb. Neither man mentioned it.
The cameras showed a gray utility van arriving at 6:17. It carried a magnetic sign belonging to a floral supplier who had not delivered to the house in months. At 6:22 the driver crossed the service court. He kept his face angled away from the nearest camera and paused beside the fountain. At 6:24 he left by the west gate.
“No plates,” Marco said. “Covered with dirt. Could be deliberate.”
“Could be a man who doesn't wash his van.”
Marco enlarged the image. “He knew which camera was broken.”
“Who signed off on the maintenance order?”
“I did.” Marco met his eyes. “I approved the request and assumed the vendor would come. I should have checked.”
Dominic had known Marco for sixteen years. In the old days he might have made the admission painful. Tonight he only said, “Then we change the procedure tomorrow. Put it in writing.”
Marco nodded once. The pink streak on his thumbnail looked strangely brave against the dark keyboard.
The west gate had a blind spot. Dominic had ordered it repaired three weeks earlier. A replacement part, apparently, was still on a procurement list.
“Find out why that wasn't fixed.”
“There is something else.”
Marco played the footage again. Just before leaving, the visitor reached through an opening in the iron fence and hung something on a branch of the climbing rose. A small white card. Marco had retrieved it, using a handkerchief to keep from disturbing its surface.
The card had no name. Someone had drawn a child's five-pointed star in pink crayon. Underneath were four words in block letters: GOOD GIRLS FORGET THINGS.
Dominic read it twice. The message was crude in a way that made him angrier than a polished threat would have done. Whoever wrote it knew the language a small child would understand.
“Does Emma know?”
“Not yet.”
“Ask her whether she's ever seen one like it. Don't frighten Sophie.”
Marco hesitated. “You should know how I ran the background check. The agency sent employment records, address history, references. She had a different surname until recently. Hale.”
Dominic looked up. “People change names.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“The file's reference letter came from a community center called Harbor House.”
Harbor House. The name sat between them with the weight of something left on a shelf too long. It was a low brick building near the river, acquired years earlier by a family charitable trust. There had been an investigation, a warehouse fire, accusations against his brother Matteo. After the funeral, Dominic had delegated the trust to Vincent Rinaldi, his godfather. He had stopped asking questions because every answer brought him back to the same grief.
“What was her job there?” he asked.
“Part-time bookkeeper. She left after the building was sold.”
“Sold?”
“According to the county records.”
Dominic stood. He remembered approving a management change in 2020. He did not remember selling the property. Vincent handled such things, and Dominic had trusted Vincent since boyhood.
At midnight, Emma appeared in the office doorway, wrapped in a borrowed cardigan. She had slept, if at all, for only a few minutes. In her hand was the white card Marco had shown her.
“Where did you find this?”
“The rosebush,” Dominic said.
“Was he inside the grounds?”
“Yes.”
Emma nodded, a small defeated movement. “Then we can't go back to our apartment.”
“You can stay here while we call the police.”
Her response was immediate. “Please don't call them before I've spoken to you.”
“Why?”
“Because the last time I reported him, he knew what I'd said before I got home.”
Dominic pulled out a chair. She did not sit. Instead, she examined the photograph frozen on Marco's monitor. He could see the moment recognition struck her: her shoulders fell, not with surprise, but with the exhaustion of being right.
“Who is he?”
“I don't know his real name. He used to come on Sundays. Always wearing a charcoal coat, even in spring. Sophie called him the Sunday man.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted the box Matteo left me.”
The room went quiet. Marco's hand stopped over the keyboard. Dominic felt as if the floor had shifted an inch beneath his shoes.
Emma seemed to realize what she'd said. She looked between the men, then stared at the card she was twisting in her fingers.
“Matteo Russo?” Dominic asked.
She nodded.
“Where did you know my brother?”
Emma's voice was barely audible. “He was going to marry me.”
Dominic heard the hum of the monitors and, somewhere down the hallway, the mechanical sigh of the air-conditioning. The name of his brother had been unwelcome in this room for six years. Now it seemed to be everywhere.
May you like
He opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, but Emma spoke first.
“And Sophie,” she said, with tears she refused to let fall, “is his daughter.”
