Chapter 5 - The Camera Vivienne Forgot
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Security footage from the storage hallway was pulled immediately.
Dominic watched the screen in silence.
11:42 a.m.
That same morning.
Vivienne entered the servants’ wing.
Alone.
She carried nothing.
Three minutes later, she returned.
A small red metal box was beneath her arm.
Grace covered her mouth.
Maisie looked from the screen to Vivienne.
“You took it.”
Vivienne’s face remained controlled.
“I moved abandoned property.”
Dominic stared at her.
“Where?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You stole a locked box from my staff and forgot where you put it?”
Vivienne smiled tightly.
“I didn’t know it mattered.”
Grace whispered—
“You knew exactly what it was.”
Vivienne’s eyes flashed.
Grace stood straighter.
“Elena told me someone had searched her apartment after she left the hospital.”
Dominic turned.
“You never told me that.”
“I didn’t know who.”
Grace looked at Vivienne.
“Now I do.”
Dominic ordered security to review every camera.
At 12:06 p.m., Vivienne carried the red box into her private suite.
At 12:19, she left without it.
The box had never appeared on camera again.
Dominic looked at security.
“Seal the suite.”
Vivienne stepped forward.
“You cannot search my room.”
“It’s my house.”
“You gave Matteo and me that suite.”
“Matteo is dead.”
Her face hardened at the mention of Dominic’s younger brother.
She had been his widow for four years.
Since Matteo’s death, she had remained at the Castellano estate and served on several family boards.
Dominic had tolerated her arrogance because she had been his brother’s wife.
That tolerance was disappearing quickly.
Inside Vivienne’s suite, they found no red box.
But Maisie wandered toward the fireplace.
Dominic immediately stopped her.
“Stay with Grace.”
Maisie pointed.
“There’s red paint.”
A tiny mark showed along the edge of an antique brass coal chest.
Dominic opened it.
Empty.
But ash inside was still warm.
Grace gasped.
“She burned it.”
Vivienne laughed.
“You’re guessing.”
Dominic looked through the ashes.
Paper.
Metal fragments.
Something glass.
Then he found a blackened corner of a photograph.
He wiped it carefully.
Elena’s face.
Grace began crying.
Maisie did not.
She stared at Vivienne.
“Why do you hate my mom?”
Vivienne’s expression flickered.
For one second, guilt appeared.
Then vanished.
“I barely knew her.”
Grace suddenly stepped toward her.
“You knew her well enough to visit her in the hospital.”
Vivienne looked away.
Dominic’s security chief continued searching.
Then he found something beneath the coal chest.
A flash drive.
Vivienne’s face changed.
Dominic picked it up.
“Missed one.”
The drive had apparently fallen behind the chest before the box was burned.
Dominic looked at Vivienne.
“What’s on it?”
She said nothing.
The files loaded minutes later.
Most were encrypted.
But one opened immediately.
A scanned letter.
Addressed:
DOMINIC CASTELLANO.
Dated eight years earlier.
The first line read:
Dominic, if you’re reading this, then someone finally stopped lying to you.
May you like
👉 Vivienne had burned Elena’s box, but she had missed the one file Elena created specifically for the day Dominic discovered the truth.
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