Chapter 10 - Mrs. Collins Had Been Watching Too
Mrs. Collins had worked for Daniel’s family longer than Daniel had been alive.
She had seen marriages rise and collapse, children born, fortunes rearranged, secrets buried in polite language.
She had disliked Vanessa from the beginning—not because Vanessa was sharp, but because she was performative. People like that, in Mrs. Collins’s experience, were often kind only when observed.
“I started noticing small things,” she admitted in Daniel’s study.
“Like what?” Daniel asked.
“She never struck them in front of me. But Ethan always stiffened when she entered a room. Sophie screamed when Vanessa reached for her. And once, when I came in unexpectedly, Vanessa snatched a spoon away from the baby like she’d been jabbing it too hard.”
Daniel leaned against the desk, sickened.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried twice. Indirectly.” Mrs. Collins held his gaze. “You said newly blended families were complicated.”
He had said exactly that.
God, he had.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Mrs. Collins softened, but only a little.
“You were blinded. That happens when someone tells you what you want to hear.”
She then revealed the worst part.
A week earlier, she had found Ethan sliding a tiny motion camera under a bookshelf.
“He told me he needed proof because grown-ups only believe grown-up faces.”
Daniel sat down hard in his chair.
Mrs. Collins took the first memory card from her apron pocket—the one Vanessa had been searching for.
“I copied it before handing it back to you,” she said. “There are more files than you saw.”
Together they viewed the rest.
Vanessa on the phone with an unknown attorney.
Vanessa rifling through estate files.
Vanessa whispering to someone, “If Daniel doesn’t toughen up, I’ll make the boy seem dangerous and the baby medically fragile.”
Daniel stood so abruptly the chair overturned behind him.
He turned away before he punched the wall.
Not because he feared hurting his hand.
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Because he feared what came after anger when a man realized someone had been systematically terrifying his children in his own home.
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