Chapter 4 - The Hidden Camera
The receipt in my lap was the ultimate proof of my mother's corruption.
She had bought the CPS worker a brand new luxury vehicle to guarantee my daughter would be taken away from me.
I shoved the paper deep into my pocket, my mind racing with a hundred different desperate plans.
I could not fight a rigged system from a hospital waiting room.
If I wanted to save Lily, I needed undeniable proof of what happened in that house this morning.
I sprinted out of the hospital and hailed a taxi, ordering the driver to take me back to my parents' suburban mansion.
The house was completely dark when the taxi pulled into the driveway.
My parents and sister were still at the hospital, pretending to be a loving, concerned family for the cameras.
I used my spare key to unlock the front door, the silence of the massive house pressing against my ears.
I didn't bother turning on the lights as I crept upstairs to the guest room where Lily and I had been staying.
When I opened the bedroom door, my heart shattered all over again.
Lily's yellow birthday dress was still hanging from the closet, mocking the joy we were supposed to share today.
But I wasn't there to cry.
The night before, Lily had complained that the "scary lady" kept opening her door in the middle of the night.
I had assumed she was just having nightmares about my mother's strict rules.
But just to make her feel safe, I had hidden my old laptop on the top shelf of the closet, leaving the webcam recording.
I dragged a chair to the closet and reached up to the top shelf.
My fingers brushed against the cold metal of the laptop, and a wave of profound relief washed over me.
They hadn't found it.
I pulled the laptop down and opened the screen, praying the battery hadn't died before the attack happened.
The screen flickered to life, showing the video file was safely saved to the hard drive.
I clicked play and watched the grainy footage of my daughter sleeping peacefully in her bed.
At exactly 5:14 a.m., the bedroom door slowly creaked open.
A figure stepped into the room, holding a small plastic cup filled with a bright blue liquid.
It wasn't my mother.
It wasn't Vanessa.
It was my father.
I watched in pure horror as my father pinched my sleeping daughter's nose, forcing her mouth open as she gasped for air.
He poured the antifreeze mixture down her throat and held his hand over her mouth until she swallowed it.
I slammed the laptop shut, my entire body violently shaking with a mixture of grief and homicidal rage.
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Suddenly, the floorboards in the hallway creaked.
Someone else was inside the house.
