The Hidden St. Aldwyn’s Payment

I went down the long passage toward my private study. The house had fallen utterly quiet. Catering workers remained outside beneath the event tents, while the residential wing felt sealed up like a crypt. My footsteps struck the tall ceilings and returned to me.

Antique mirrors ran along the corridor. Each one offered a fractured glimpse of my face as I passed. I looked bloodless, wild-eyed, like someone ripping through his own home in search of a thing that might have been himself.

I forced open the study's mahogany door and switched on the brass lamp. Its amber glow spread across the leather writing surface.

Then I circled behind the desk and lowered myself into the heavy leather chair.

Three drawers sat on the desk's right side. The upper pair contained stationery and tax papers. The lowest drawer, made of reinforced oak, was protected by a fingerprint reader.

That drawer held the estate's backup drives, my passport, and several inherited family objects. Mara had never been allowed inside it. Neither had anyone else.

I placed my thumb on the black sensor set into the brass pull. A green light blinked. The mechanism released with a sharp click, and I dragged the drawer outward.

Nothing seemed disturbed at first. The hard drives remained arranged on the left. My passport folio lay precisely where it belonged.

Then I noticed something shoved behind a stack of fat legal files at the very back: a charcoal-gray iPad.

It did not belong to me. I worked from a laptop, and Persephone was not permitted a tablet.

I took it from the drawer. It felt cold and surprisingly weighty in my hands. When I pressed the side button, the display came alive immediately.

There was no password request. No normal screen appeared, no applications, no browser. Against a black field, one video file sat alone in the center.

Its label read: September 27. The Miller Wedding.

My chest clenched. September 27 was the evening Persephone had supposedly wrecked the reception, throwing a silver tray and collapsing into a screaming fit beside the reflection pool. It was also the night Dr. Thorne had supposedly seen her.

My hands shook so badly that I laid the iPad flat on the desk blotter before touching the play symbol.

Black-and-white night footage filled the screen. I knew the viewpoint at once: the camera at the far end of the second-floor residential hall, aimed squarely at Persephone's bedroom.

The timestamp showed 1:14 AM.

For several seconds, the hallway remained empty. Then someone lurched into sight from the staircase on the left.

It was me.

My breath caught as I stared. I wore the dark tuxedo from the Miller wedding, though my bow tie had vanished and the jacket hung crookedly from one shoulder. A crystal whiskey glass was clutched in my right hand.

I did not resemble an estate manager with a successful business. I looked disheveled, broad, and frighteningly hostile.

Onscreen, I reeled down the hallway, scraping my shoulder against the costly floral wallpaper. At Persephone's room, I found the door locked.

I seized the brass handle and shook it with violent force. When it resisted, I lifted my leather dress shoe and drove it into the oak. The impact boomed through the iPad speakers, and I recoiled in my chair.

"Open this door, Mara!" my voice snarled, thick with drink. "I know you're in there with her! Open the damn door!"

I could not move. I was watching myself commit acts I could not remember.

The figure on the screen kicked again, harder. Wood cracked around the frame. "She humiliated me!" I shouted at the locked door, brandishing the tumbler. "Three hundred corporate guests, and my kid is shrieking beneath a table! I lost the Miller account tonight! Because of her! Because of you!"

I watched, sickened, as I swung the crystal glass into the wall beside Persephone's door. It burst apart, fragments scattering across the hall runner.

"Get her out of my house!" the man on the recording bellowed. "I'll put her in an orphanage! I'll pay somebody to take her! I can't stand looking at her anymore!"

The image jolted, cutting to another camera. This one was not in the hallway. It sat low and concealed somewhere inside Persephone's bedroom, aimed at the bed.

Mara was on the floor in the narrow gap between the wall and bedframe. She held Persephone tight against her chest while our daughter's small body shook with every blow landing outside the door.

Then I saw the pillow. Mara pulled a thick white feather pillow from the mattress, wrapped both arms around Persephone, and pressed its padded sides over our daughter's ears. She was not trying to smother her. The footage ended with me confronting the reality that I was the monster from whom Mara was protecting Persephone.