Chapter 3: What the Camera Saw
Nobody spoke as Ethan walked to the corner of the room and reached up to the camera mount.
His fingers found the small cable running into the wall.
He followed it with his eyes to the recording unit on the shelf — a black box the size of a hardback book, a red light still blinking steadily on its face.
"Does this feed to a laptop?" he asked.
"Study," Richard said.
"Same room as the drawer."
Ethan looked at Sophia once.
Then he left the room.
Sophia turned to the aunt — Richard's sister, Carol, who was standing near the doorway with her arms crossed and her mouth tight.
"Carol, you know me," Sophia said.
"You know what kind of woman I am."
Carol looked at her for a long moment.
"I thought I did."
The two cousins shifted toward the hallway.
The room was emptying around Sophia the way a tide pulls back from shore — slowly, without announcement.
Richard lowered himself into the armchair near the window.
His cheek had gone dark where Ethan had sl@pped him.
He didn't touch it.
He sat with his hands on his knees and his eyes on the floor.
"You should have just stayed quiet," Sophia said, her voice dropping to something almost private.
"You were going to lose the house anyway.
This just made it faster."
Richard raised his eyes.
"What house?"
"The Millbrook property." She said it the way someone sets a card face-up on a table.
Flat.
Final.
"Ethan signed the transfer papers two weeks ago.
He just doesn't know what he signed yet."
Richard went very still.
"You forged his signature," he said.
"I assisted him in making a decision he was going to make eventually." She straightened her blouse — the torn front, the missing buttons — and something in her face rearranged itself.
The tears were completely gone now.
"The property goes to my holding company on Friday.
By the time anyone looks closely, it'll already be done."
"Sophia." Richard's voice didn't rise.
"That land has been in this family for sixty years."
"And now it won't be." She looked toward the hallway.
"So whatever is on that camera, whatever is in that envelope — it won't matter.
Because the one thing that matters will already be gone."
From down the hall came the sound of a chair scraping.
Then silence.
Then Ethan's voice, low and unreadable.
"Dad."
Richard stood.
Ethan appeared in the doorway.
He was holding a printed photograph.
His face had the particular stillness of a man who has just understood something he cannot un-understand.
"This is from three months ago," he said.
He held the photograph up so the room could see it.
Sophia, standing at a notary's desk.
A man beside her that no one in the room recognized.
Documents spread across the counter between them.
"That's not what it looks like," Sophia said immediately.
"Then tell me what it looks like." Ethan's voice was very quiet.
"Because what it looks like is you signing something with my name on it while I was in the hospital with my father."
Sophia's mouth opened.
Closed.
"The envelope had six of these," Ethan said.
"Six photographs.
Dated.
Timestamped." He looked at her.
"Dad had someone watching you."
The room felt like it had lost all its air.
Sophia looked at Richard.
For the first time since the screaming, since the buttons, since the camera — she looked genuinely uncertain.
"You had me followed," she said.
"I had the property watched," Richard said.
"After the first time you tried to access the deed without Ethan's knowledge." He paused.
"That was eight months ago."
Sophia's chin lifted.
"None of that is admissible—"
"I'm not taking you to court," Richard said.
"Ethan is."
Ethan set the photograph on the table between them.
He didn't slam it.
He placed it carefully, the way you place something you intend to leave there permanently.
"I need you to tell me," he said, "how many documents you've signed with my name."
Sophia said nothing.
"Sophia." His voice cracked on the second syllable.
Just slightly.
"How many."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she looked at the photograph.
May you like
Then she looked at the door.
"I want to call my lawyer," she said.
