Chapter 4 - The Puppet Master

"What are you talking about?" I shouted, the files trembling in my grip. "These are people’s lives, Liam! Tracking logs? Extortion? You’re a monster!"
Liam walked slowly toward me, his hands raised, palms open. "Look at the dates, Claire. Look at the timestamps on the logs."
I looked down at the file for Mrs. Nevin. The date wasn't the day she left. It was six months before she was hired. My eyes scanned the documents. These weren't plans to hurt them; they were dossiers. Financial debts, hidden medical records, threats from loan sharks—it was all there.
"They weren't just nannies," Liam said, his voice raw. "They were sent here. Every single one of them. Your background, your family’s history… you think your past is just a quiet life in the suburbs? You are the heir to a fortune that half the criminal underworld is trying to claim. I wasn't vetting nannies, Claire. I was vetting assassins."
The room spun. I thought back to the way Rebecca had looked at me—not with fear, but with a clinical, detached assessment. I remembered how Mrs. Nevin had "accidentally" left a drawer open, revealing a hidden compartment for a firearm. I had been so busy being a housewife that I hadn't noticed I was living in a minefield.
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"Why didn't you tell me?" I whispered, the file falling to the cold concrete.
"Because as long as you believed you were a normal woman in a normal house," Liam said, stepping close enough to touch my face, "they couldn't get to you. If you knew the truth, you’d be a target. My 'boundaries' weren't to control you, Claire. They were to keep you alive."