Chapter 3 - The Smile in the Hallway
The hallway camera captured the dim, warm amber glow of the sconces lining the east wing corridor. A figure stepped into view, moving with a quiet, practiced grace that made my blood run cold.
It was Hilda Dawson.
She carried a silver tray in her hands. On the tray sat a crystal bowl piled high with fresh raspberries and a silver cup of steaming bone broth—the exact kind of meal she photographed for her weekly reports.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged animal. Was she coming to feed them? Was the timing a coincidence? Had she discovered the stranger outside?
Hilda walked at a measured, unhurried pace toward the heavy oak nursery door. But just three feet before the threshold, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Her stride halted. Her shoulders stiffened.
Slowly, deliberately, Hilda raised her head. Her chin tilted upward until her eyes locked directly onto the tiny, pinhole lens of the hidden camera mounted near the decorative crown molding.
She didn't look startled. She didn't look angry.
Instead, a slow, thin smile crept across her thin lips—a cold, calculating smirk that didn't reach her dead, glassy eyes. She stood there in the silent hallway, staring straight into the lens as if she had known the camera was there the entire time. As if she had been waiting for me to find out.
My breath hitched. The room suddenly felt entirely devoid of air.
She knew.
Hilda didn't just know I was watching; she wanted me to watch. She wanted me to sit in my dark, lonely study, surrounded by my wealth and my pathetic little security cameras, while she starved my children right under my nose.
On the nursery window monitor, the homeless woman suddenly stiffened. She pressed a finger to her lips, whispered something urgent to Rosalyn, and vanished back into the deep shadows of the oak trees like a ghost dissolving into the fog.
A second later, the nursery door clicked open.
Hilda stepped inside the room, the silver tray balanced effortlessly on one hand. Her expression shifted instantly from that terrifying, predatory smirk back to her practiced, grandmotherly mask of serene competence.
“Ah, my little angels,” Hilda cooed, her voice carrying clearly through the hidden audio feed. “Time for your late-night snack. Let’s get these lovely berries into your tummies, shall we?”
On screen, Rosalyn and Camille backed away instantly, retreating toward the far corner of the room, clutching each other like frightened animals. They didn't look at the silver tray. They didn't look at the raspberries. Their little bodies trembled with a primal terror that words couldn't capture.
Hilda sighed, setting the tray down on a side table with a soft clink of china. “Stubborn tonight, are we? Very well. We’ll try again in the morning.”
She turned and swept out of the room, locking the heavy oak door behind her with a heavy, ominous clack of the deadbolt.
I sat frozen in my leather chair, my hands shaking so violently I could barely keep the crystal glass from slipping through my fingers. Twelve armed guards patrolling the perimeter. A fortress of steel and concrete. And my children were prisoners inside a room controlled by a woman who enjoyed watching them waste away.
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Why? What kind of monster starves two innocent toddlers?
And more importantly—what else didn't I know?
