Chapter 3: The Leather-Bound Secret
Elena froze with Maya clutched awkwardly against her red silk blouse. Her eyes dropped to the open pages of the leather-bound notebook resting on the white rug. The handwriting was neat at first, then grew increasingly erratic toward the bottom of the page. David leaned down, his large hand sweeping the book off the floor before Elena could bend over.
"What is that?" David asked, his voice sharp and low.
Clara scrambled backward on her knees, her hands flying up to cover her face as fresh tears spilled over her fingers.
"Don't read it. Please, Mr. Vance, just let me leave. I'll take my things and go right now," Clara begged, her voice pitching into a panicked whine.
David ignored her plea. His eyes scanned the lines of ink, his expression shifting from furious to something entirely unreadable. Elena bounced Maya gently, trying to quiet the infant while craning her neck to see what her husband was reading.
"David, what does it say? Is she keeping tabs on us?" Elena demanded, her voice rising again.
"Listen to this," David said, his voice dangerously quiet. "'May 12th. Father spent forty minutes in the nursery alone with the baby while mother was at the gallery. He didn't turn on the lights. He just whispered to her about a mistake he couldn't undo.'"
The nursery grew dead silent, save for the muffled sniffles of the baby. Elena stopped bouncing Maya. She stared at her husband, the color draining rapidly from her face.
"What does that even mean, Clara?" Elena asked, turning her blazing anger back toward the nanny. "What were you implying in this sick little diary?"
Clara lowered her hands, her eyes wide and hollow. She looked less terrified now and more resigned, as if a trap had finally sprung shut.
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"I wasn't implying anything, Mrs. Vance. I was just doing my job. Protecting the child from the things you two choose to ignore," Clara whispered, her voice steadying in a chilling manner.
David slowly closed the notebook, his fingers pressing into the leather cover until his knuckles turned white. He turned his head away from the two women and looked back up at the white baby monitor mounted on the wall, realizing with a sickening jolt that the internal hard drive of the camera didn't just stream to their phones—it had been backing up to a cloud server he hadn't checked in months.
