Chapter 3 - The Missing Footage
The tiny black camera felt heavy and cold in the palm of my trembling hand. Marianne had been secretly recording my every move inside my own home. I quickly grabbed my laptop and connected the device using a spare USB cable from my desk. If this camera was active tonight, it would show Marianne putting the crushed pills into Noah's bottle. A digital folder containing hundreds of video files popped up on my glowing screen. My stomach turned violently as I realized she had been watching me nurse, sleep, and cry for months. I scrolled down frantically to the files timestamped for this specific evening. My hands shook as I clicked play on the video recorded at exactly six o'clock. The grainy footage showed Marianne walking into the nursery with the bottle I had prepared. I leaned closer to the screen, holding my breath in anticipation. Marianne stood with her back to the camera for a moment, deliberately obscuring her hands from view. Then the video suddenly glitched and jumped aggressively forward in time. There was a full ten-minute gap completely missing from the critical window of time. She had remotely accessed the network feed and deleted the only video evidence of her crime. Hot tears of sheer frustration streamed down my exhausted face. I kept clicking through the older files, praying she had made a careless mistake. I opened a video recorded exactly three days ago. It showed Marianne entering my bedroom while I was downstairs doing the laundry. She opened my purse and carefully placed the orange prescription bottle deep inside. I finally had the undeniable, visual proof I needed to destroy her wicked lies forever. I quickly saved the video to my desktop and reached for my phone to call Daniel. Before I could dial his number, the laptop screen suddenly went completely black. A chilling text message popped up in the center of the dark monitor. "Did you really think I wouldn't secure my own network, Emily?"
