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The air in the security room grew heavier as Marcus tapped a few keys, bringing up the archive footage from the main hallway and the second-floor landing. On screen, the house was quiet. The morning sunlight streamed through the tall Victorian windows, casting long, geometric shadows across the polished hardwood floors. / Chapter 2 / 8

Chapter 2 - THE ALIBI EXPLODES

The timestamp on the new feed jumped to 7:45 PM, Tuesday evening.

On the screen, Mr. Vance could see himself pacing back and forth in his study, exhausted from a twelve-hour day at the corporate office. The door was ajar. A few feet down the hall, Patricia was standing near the console table where she had stashed the velvet pouch earlier that morning.

The video showed Patricia executing her next move with chilling precision. She casually walked past the console table, pretended to notice a glint of fabric beneath the drawer, and gasped loudly enough to draw his attention.

"Arthur? Oh, Arthur, you won't believe this," Patricia had cried out in the recording.

Mr. Vance watched his past self stop pacing, step out of the study, and ask what was wrong.

On the screen, Patricia held up the velvet pouch, her eyes shimmering with fake tears of betrayal. "I found it. Right here, hidden under the console table outside your study. Rosa must have panicked when she realized you were coming home early and dropped it there before she could sneak it out of the house."

In the security room, the real Mr. Vance stared at the monitor, utterly nauseated by his own gullibility. Back then, tired, stressed, and desperate for peace at home, he had accepted her narrative without question. He hadn't checked the cameras. Why would he? Patricia had played the devoted, trusting partner so flawlessly.

"Play the audio from the hidden mic inside the hallway," Marcus instructed, hitting a secondary play button.

The tinny, amplified sound of his own past voice echoed through the security room speakers: “I can’t believe she would do this. After everything we’ve done for her family…”

And then came Patricia’s voice, honeyed and venomous: “I know, darling. It hurts me as much as it hurts you. But we have to protect ourselves. If she’ll steal from us, what else will she do? Let’s just keep it between us for now. I don’t want to cause a public scandal.”

"She isolated Rosa completely," Marcus remarked quietly. "After that night, Rosa stopped talking to the other staff. She stopped coming to you for help because Patricia told her that if she complained again, you’d fire her daughter Martina from her college internship program."

Mr. Vance’s hands slammed down onto the steel desk, rattling the monitors.

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"My God," he whispered. "She used Martina's future as a leash."

"She used everything as a leash, sir," Marcus corrected, his face hardening. "Not just Rosa. Let’s look at what happened to Daniela last Thursday. That’s when things stopped being psychological... and turned physical."

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