Chapter 8 - The House Starts Watching Us
By the third day, the mansion felt different.
Nothing had changed physically.
The same cameras watched the gates.
The same guards rotated shifts.
The same staff crossed the same marble corridors.
But now I understood that security did not mean loyalty.
Raymond had hired people.
Mercer had hired people.
Vendors entered without my attention.
Drivers heard conversations.
Assistants controlled schedules.
An empire creates distance.
Distance creates blind spots.
And someone had been living inside mine.
Marcus quietly replaced two guards assigned to the service entrance.
Leah moved the evidence off company servers.
June continued working because changing her routine would reveal too much.
I hated that.
Every time she disappeared around a corner, I wondered who might be watching her.
At 6:14 that evening, she found her locker open.
Nothing appeared stolen.
But everything had been moved.
Her purse had been unzipped.
Her wallet opened.
A photograph of Lila and Micah had been removed and placed on top of her uniform.
June came to find me.
She held the photograph with shaking fingers.
“This wasn't like this.”
Marcus examined the locker.
“No forced entry.”
“Who has keys?” I asked.
“Household management.”
“And?”
“Mercer's office maintains emergency duplicates.”
June went pale.
I took the photograph.
On the back, someone had written four words.
THINK ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN.
June stopped breathing.
Marcus swore under his breath.
I felt rage rise so quickly that I had to force myself not to move.
For years, anger had been useful to me.
It made other people act.
It made doors open.
It made men nervous.
But this was different.
If I responded the old way, Raymond could make himself the victim.
I needed evidence.
And June needed protection.
“You're done working here for now.”
She shook her head.
“I need the hours.”
“You'll be paid.”
“I can't disappear.”
“You're right.”
She stared at me.
I turned to Marcus.
“We move her without making it look like we moved her.”
Marcus understood.
June did not.
At midnight, a different woman wearing June's gray housekeeping coat exited the mansion through the service entrance and drove June's car toward Chicago.
June left forty minutes later hidden in the rear seat of one of my security vehicles.
She spent the night in a guest property near the lake.
Her children and mother were brought there before dawn.
When June saw Lila and Micah asleep in the upstairs bedroom, she finally cried.
Not loudly.
She simply sat on the floor beside the bed and covered her face.
I stood in the doorway.
“You shouldn't have had to do this.”
She wiped her eyes.
“You didn't write the threat.”
“My company made whoever wrote it believe they could.”
She looked at me.
“Why are you helping me now?”
I thought about that question.
Because I was angry?
Because Raymond betrayed me?
Because my name was exposed?
All of those answers were partly true.
But none were enough.
“Because you were eating cold rice on my pantry floor while my records said you were being taken care of.”
I paused.
“And I don't ever want to be the kind of man who can see that and walk away.”
June looked toward her sleeping children.
“Then don't just fix mine.”
May you like
“I won't.”
That promise became the most important contract I had ever made.
