Chapter 27 Chapter 27
Dominics Pov
I leaned back in the heavy oak desk in my study, the weight of my thoughts pushing me deeper into the leather chair. The shadows played across the bookshelves as the sun dipped below the horizon, casting a foreboding atmosphere over everything I once knew.
Something was not right.
My fingers tapped against the keyboard as I scrolled through the server logs on the home network. I ran a query to pull timestamps from each access point—laptops, tablets, backup drives, even the hidden server routed through an encrypted node in the basement. My heartbeat slowed when I spotted the tiny gap, a 2 minutes hole hole in the east corridor camera feed. It didn't appear at a glance. But in a house like this, rigged to monitor and lock down, even seconds mattered.
At 3:42 am, the feed flickered. Just for a second.
I leaned in. Rewound. Watched it again.
From 3:42 Jump to 3:44.
A clean, deliberate, two-minute gap.
I rewound the recording before and after the gap. The timestamp stuttered like a skipped heartbeat. One moment the hallway was empty, the next Serena emerged from the guest room, expression unreadable.
That guest room hadn't been disturbed in weeks. I rocked back, my jaw tight as a cold trickle developed at the nape of my neck. No motion trigger. No system log entry for a trigger. It was like whoever broke into the camera system knew exactly what they were doing.
I reached for the phone, thought better of it, and pounded it onto the desk.
She was just upstairs. I pushed the intercom button beside me. "Serena," I said, voice flat, controlled, "come to the study."
A pause.
Then: "Okay."
When she entered, she was barefoot, hair loose, eyes querying. "You called?"
I jerked my head to the chair across from me. "Sit."
Her eyebrows rose. "Am I in trouble?"
I tilted my head. "Should you be?"
She sat slowly, the careless wit in her smile leaving her. "What's this about?
I didn't answer right away. I pulled up the network log and turned the screen around to face her. "Did you go to do anything in the guest room last nights?"
Her gaze darted to the screen, then back to me. "No."
"You're sure?"
"I haven't even been in there."
"But you were. I have a video of you coming out of it."
Her body tensed, just a bit. Enough that I caught it. “Ohhh, I went by to retrieve a scarf," she said. "You know I kept some of my stuff there since it's not in use. ."
“I didn't know that." That was a lie. But I needed to see her reaction.
Serena's throat worked in a slow swallow. "Well, I did keep some of my belongings there."
"Why?”
She blinked. "Dominic, drop the questions. What's going on?"
I stood, walking over to the liquor cabinet. Poured a straight bourbon. "There was a breach."
"A what?
“Two minutes of missing footage. From one of the most secure systems available."
She stood also, defensively at once. "You think I did it?"
"I think someone did it. And you were the only person in that hall at the time."
Her mouth opened, but she didn't say anything.
I sipped the bourbon slowly. "Did you let anyone in?"
"No," she said shortly. "I don't even have a reason to." I studied her every microexpression, every flicker of her eyes.
"I'll have it investigated," I said finally. "You may go."
She lingered for a moment, maybe waiting for me to say something more. When I didn't, she turned and left without a word.
I didn't believe her. Not entirely. But there was something else, something off. Her aura wasn't the smug enjoyment of a manipulator pulling her puppet strings. It was mixed up. Like she didn't understand what was happening either.
Still, I couldn't ignore the intrusion.
I reached for my phone and dialed one of the few people I trusted with things like this—an ex-global company cybersecurity analyst turned under-the-radar consultant for people like me.
"Dom," he answered after two rings. "You're alive."
"Barely."
"That bad?"
"I need you to look at something. I'm sending the files."
I forwarded the logs, discrepancies in camera feeds, and a copy of the compromised access report.
He whistled into the receiver. "This wasn't a glitch. Somebody spliced the feed. Cleanly."
"How clean?"
"They scrubbed system triggers. They didn't delete, they replaced the packets with looped code. Whoever did this knew what they were doing."
"Can you trace it?"
"Not from this. But they used your local network. Which means somebody was in your house."
A slow chill crept into my chest. "I thought so.
"I'll do some deeper investigations, but…you may want to look into internal interference. Who else is living there?"
"Just me and Serena, my fiancé."
He paused. "Do not get new wrong, but do you trust her?"
"I thought I did, but I am not so sure anymore."
His tone softened. "Then I'd start digging."
I hung up, tension coiling up my spine. My next call was to a private investigator. Elias Langley. Discreet, thorough, and deadly good at what he did.
I gave him Serena's full name, recent activity I'd tracked via the home logs, and a list of addresses she'd said she'd visited in the last three weeks. "I want to know everything. Where she goes, who she sees. Compare her phone records if you can."
"You think she's hiding something?"
"I think she's not who I thought she was."
"Understood. I'll get to work."
……….
The next two days passed in a haze of silence and suspicion. Serena acted normally, too normally. She still lingered in the kitchen to make breakfast, still reached out to touch my arm as we crossed paths, still laughed too loudly at nothing. And I played along. Quiet. Watchful. Controlled.
But inside, my mind screamed.
I thought I had seen it all but suddenly, I was dealt the final blow. I was reviewing the latest server audit when an alert from the system popped up—Accessed File Recovered: Project_Obsidian-Deleted.ver3
I stared at it, my heart racing.
That file wasn't just confidential, it was deep-sixed. A record of one of the darkest times in my life, one that connected Liana and me to an event that could destroy everything.
The file had been accessed. From within the house. I opened the recovery window and looked at the access timestamp, exactly 15 hours ago. Matching the breach window.
My blood ran cold.
I was about to trace the exact IP address when my phone buzzed.
Langley, I answered.
"Sir, you have to see this in person," he said.
"What did you find?"
"I'm sending coordinates. Meet me in an hour. Come alone."
"Langley…"
But he'd already hung up.
The air in my study felt thinner. The walls nearer. And somewhere above me, Serena was humming. The melody coming through the vents suddenly felt…ominous.