My Father Kicked Me Into Our TV After I Let Marissa Slap My Daughter—Then the Device Hidden Inside It Revealed / Chapter 2 / 40

Chapter 2 - The Card Behind the Screen

For a few seconds, no one moved.

My father still stood with Nora behind him. Marissa stood near the shattered wine glass. I was half-kneeling beside the broken TV, one hand braced against the floor, trying to breathe through the ache in my back.

And in the middle of all of us, near the smashed television frame, lay that tiny black memory card.

It shouldn’t have mattered.

Not to anyone looking in from the outside.

Just a speck of plastic on a polished floor.

But Marissa’s eyes locked on it the way a drowning person locks on a life raft. Not curiosity. Not confusion.

Recognition.

My father saw it too.

“What is that?” he asked.

Marissa answered too quickly. “Nothing.”

Nora tightened both hands into the back of his jacket. I saw her peeking around his side, her face still blotchy from crying.

“It was blinking,” she whispered.

All three of us turned to her.

My father lowered his voice at once. “What was blinking, sweetheart?”

She pointed.

“That thing behind the TV. I saw a red light.”

The air seemed to change.

I looked at the broken screen, then at the card, then at Marissa.

“Nora,” I said carefully, “when did you see it?”

“Yesterday. And before that too.”

Marissa straightened. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

But Nora didn’t look at her. She looked at me.

“I told you.”

That was the second blow of the afternoon.

Because she had.

Three nights earlier, while I was taking off my blazer after work, Nora had stood in the doorway of my study and said, “Daddy, the TV has a little eye.”

I’d barely looked up from an email. I told her it was probably the power light.

She said, “No, it blinks when Marissa moves it.”

I laughed it off.

Marissa, who had come up behind Nora with perfect timing, smiled and told me Nora had been watching too many mystery cartoons.

And I had let that explanation satisfy me.

Now my father bent down, picked up the memory card, and held it between two fingers. “What kind of eye falls out of a television, Everett?”

I had no answer for him.

Marissa took one step forward. “Give me that.”

The tone of her voice made my father laugh once, coldly.

“Oh, now I definitely know I’m keeping it.”

He slipped the card into his vest pocket and turned slightly so Nora stayed behind him.

“Dad,” I said, my voice rough, “give it to me.”

He held my stare for a long second, as if deciding whether I had earned even that much trust.

Then he crossed the room and pressed it into my hand.

“It better matter now,” he said. “Because it didn’t matter enough when she was standing there crying.”

I swallowed the shame and looked at the card. It wasn’t a simple memory card from a family camera. There was a tiny adhesive label on it.

LGR-FOYER 03

Foyer.

My stomach tightened.

I looked toward the opening near the front hall, then back at the broken TV. The television faced the living room, but its placement gave it a clear angle toward the foyer entrance too.

Marissa must have realized I’d read the label, because her whole face changed.

“You have no right—”

“No right to what?” my father snapped. “Find out why there’s hidden footage in my granddaughter’s home?”

“It’s Everett’s home,” she shot back.

“And Nora lives in it.”

That one sentence hit harder than I expected.

Because beneath all the shouting and the violence and the humiliation of the last few minutes, that was the real question, wasn’t it?

Whose home had this become?

Mine?

My daughter’s?

Or Marissa’s?

I walked to the console table and grabbed my laptop from the lower shelf where I’d left it earlier in the day. My hands weren’t steady. I slid the card in.

Marissa moved toward me.

“Everett, don’t.”

“Why?”

Her mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

The card loaded almost instantly. There were six folders. Each was labeled with dates.

And one file sat at the top level like it had been pulled there recently.

NORA—MONDAY DRAFT

My father saw it over my shoulder.

“So that’s what she ruined.”

I clicked.

Instead of video, a scanned document opened.