Chapter 14

The Footage

Alexander's Pov

Elena called me that same night, her voice tight with an urgency I'd never heard from her before.

"Mr. Hunt, I need you to come to the mansion. There's something you need to see, and I've been too afraid to show anyone until now."

I drove through the dark with Vincent's threat still burning in my pocket, my mind racing through every possible way to protect Lily and Sophie before dawn.

Elena met me in the security office, a small room off the kitchen I hadn't visited in years. She pulled up old footage on the ancient monitor, her hands trembling slightly.

"I saved this after your grandmother passed. I didn't know what it meant then. I think I do now."

The grainy footage showed Cassandra in Margaret's room late at night, carefully measuring something into a small cup beside the water pitcher, checking over her shoulder before slipping out.

"That's from three weeks before your grandmother's heart failed completely," Elena said quietly. "I compared the dates with the doctor's medication schedule changes. Cassandra had access to her medications every single time something worsened."

My stomach turned violently. "She was poisoning her. Speeding up her death before she could discover the embezzlement."

"There's more." Elena pulled up a second clip, this one from the mansion's east wing. Marcus and Cassandra, standing close together in a darkened hallway, her hand pressed to his chest in a gesture far too intimate for colleagues.

"They've been working together," I said, the pieces finally slamming into place with sickening clarity. "This entire time."

"I should have told you sooner. I was afraid, Mr. Hunt. Afraid of what this family does to people who cross it." Elena's eyes filled with tears. "I watched that sweet girl suffer in this house for two years, and I said nothing. I won't make that mistake again."

I gripped her shoulder gently. "You're not making a mistake now, Elena. You're the reason we might actually stop them."

I called David immediately, relaying everything Elena had shown me while pacing the length of the security office.

"This confirms what I've been finding," David said, his voice sharp with adrenaline despite the late hour. "I've been tracing Cassandra's financial history for days. Alexander, there's something bigger here. Something I need another twenty-four hours to confirm completely."

"Tell me now."

"Not until I'm certain. If I'm right, this isn't just embezzlement anymore. This is something that's been years in the making, aimed directly at destroying you and everything our family built."

After we hung up, I sat alone in that small security office with Elena's footage still frozen on the screen, Cassandra's careful, murderous hands captured forever measuring poison into an old woman's water.

Vincent's threat burned in my pocket. Marcus's betrayal sat heavy in my chest. And somewhere in a small coastal town, the woman I loved carried a child who might be mine, completely unaware how much danger still circled closer with every passing hour.

I had spent thirty-two years believing coldness was strength. Sitting in that room, surrounded by evidence of exactly where that coldness led, I understood for the first time how wrong my father had been about absolutely everything that mattered.

I stayed at the mansion until dawn, going through old security logs with Elena, piecing together a timeline that grew more damning with every file. Cassandra's visits to Margaret's room had increased sharply in the final month, always late at night, always when the house staff had gone home.

"I keep thinking about all the times I almost said something," Elena admitted, sitting across from me with two untouched cups of cold tea between us. "I told myself it wasn't my place. I told myself I was imagining things. I let fear keep me quiet, and your grandmother paid for it."

"You're not the one who poisoned her, Elena. Don't carry guilt that isn't yours."

"Neither are you, Mr. Hunt. Whatever your father raised you to become, you're choosing something different now. That has to count for something."

I thought of Lily on that bench by the water, of Sophie's laugh on borrowed phone calls, of the child who might share my blood growing inside a woman I had once dismissed as furniture. Elena was right. It had to count for something, because it was the only thing I had left to hold onto.

Before I left the mansion, Elena pressed a small key into my hand, her expression solemn. "Your grandmother's safety deposit box. She gave me this years ago, told me only to use it if something ever felt wrong in this house. I never understood what she meant until now."

Inside the box at the bank the next morning, I found letters. Dozens of them, written in Margaret's careful hand, documenting concerns about Cassandra dating back nearly two years. She'd suspected something long before any of us, noting strange behavior, missed appointments, a coldness in Cassandra's eyes whenever she thought no one was watching.

The final letter, dated just weeks before her death, broke something open in my chest that I hadn't known was still whole enough to break.

"If you're reading this, my darling boy, then something has happened to confirm my fears. Please, whatever else is true, remember Lily. She has more love in her than anyone in this family has earned. Don't let my mistakes with Cassandra cost you the one person who might actually make you happy."

Margaret had seen everything clearly, long before any of us. I only wished I had listened to her while she was still alive to say it to my face.