Chapter 5 - Claire’s Brother
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ethan Bennett answered on the fourth ring.
“Adrian?”
“Did you reactivate Noah’s teddy camera?”
Silence.
That was enough.
“Ethan.”
“Yes.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
“When?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“Suspected what?”
“That Vanessa was hurting him.”
Adrian stood so quickly the chair scraped.
“And you didn’t call me?”
“I tried.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You wouldn’t listen!”
Adrian stopped.
Ethan’s anger came through the phone.
“Every time I mentioned Vanessa, you told me Claire would want you to move forward.”
“She would.”
“Not with someone who hated her son.”
Adrian stared at the wall.
Ethan continued.
“Noah started crying whenever Vanessa’s name came up.”
“You saw him twice a month.”
“And I noticed.”
That hurt because Adrian hadn’t.
“What did you do?”
Ethan explained.
Claire had given him backup access to the teddy camera account when Noah was born.
After Claire died, it went dormant.
Six weeks earlier, Ethan found the old account.
He replaced the internal battery during a visit and reactivated motion recording.
“Why hide it from me?”
“I wanted proof.”
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
The admission deflated Adrian’s anger slightly.
“Did you see the cage?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“The camera stopped syncing three days ago.”
Vanessa must have discovered the wireless connection.
She apparently tore the bear apart searching for the memory card.
But Noah carried it outside before she found it.
Adrian looked at the muddy teddy.
His three-year-old had unknowingly protected the evidence.
“Ethan.”
“Yeah?”
“You were right.”
Silence.
“I should have listened.”
Ethan’s voice softened.
“That doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters.”
“What matters is Noah.”
Adrian nodded.
Then Ethan added—
“There’s another reason I turned the camera back on.”
“What?”
“Claire left me something.”
Adrian’s pulse changed.
“What?”
“A letter.”
“For who?”
“For me.”
“What does it say?”
Ethan hesitated.
“She was worried about Vanessa.”
Adrian went still.
Vanessa had entered Adrian’s life while Claire was still alive.
Only as a charity-board colleague then.
Nothing romantic.
Their relationship began almost a year after Claire died.
At least Adrian believed it had.
“Why would Claire be worried about her?”
“Because Vanessa asked questions about Noah’s trust.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
“When?”
“Before Claire died.”
“How?”
“She served on the hospital foundation with Claire.”
Ethan continued.
“Claire said Vanessa kept asking who would control Noah’s money if something happened to her.”
Adrian’s stomach turned.
Then Ethan said—
“And Claire wrote one sentence I never understood until now.”
“What sentence?”
Ethan read it.
“If Vanessa ever gets close to Adrian after I’m gone, it won’t be an accident.”
May you like
👉 Claire had been suspicious of Vanessa before Adrian ever dated her—and the question was no longer just what Vanessa wanted from Noah, but how long she had been planning to get close to his father.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
