Chapter 7 - The Second Account
The baby monitor had two administrator accounts.
Ethan knew about one.
The other belonged to Eleanor.
After her death, nobody removed it.
Cloud access remained tied to an email address controlled by the Hale family office.
Grant supervised that office.
Ethan stared at the account history.
Someone had logged into Eleanor’s profile repeatedly after her death.
Not from Grant’s office.
From the mansion.
Victoria.
“How?”
Ethan asked.
Margaret answered.
“Eleanor may have given her credentials.”
Amelia laughed bitterly.
“Of course she did.”
Eleanor had trusted Victoria.
Perhaps enough to share nursery access.
But why?
More archive emails provided an answer.
During Amelia’s pregnancy, Eleanor worried Ethan traveled too much.
She bought the monitor so she could check on Leo during visits.
Victoria, then a family friend, helped Eleanor configure the application.
She knew the password from the beginning.
After Eleanor died, Victoria simply kept using it.
Sarah asked:
“Did she know recordings stayed online?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do anything in front of it?”
Ethan looked at the testing clip.
“She thought she understood the camera.”
Exactly.
Victoria had checked angles.
Maybe she believed steam near the crib could be hidden if positioned correctly.
Sarah arriving changed everything.
Then technicians found something stranger.
Several older recordings had been manually deleted.
Not seventeen.
Thirty-eight.
The system recovered metadata, not video.
Dates stretched back five months.
Victoria had been deleting selected clips.
The remaining seventeen existed because a software update had changed the deletion process.
Victoria may not have realized copies remained in cloud backup.
“What happened in the missing videos?” Ethan asked.
Nobody knew.
That uncertainty became poison.
Sarah began replaying every moment she had left Leo alone with Victoria.
Ten minutes while making formula.
Twenty while handling laundry.
A shower.
Phone calls.
Nothing visible had happened to Leo.
No unexplained injury.
No major illness.
Yet not knowing hurt.
Amelia felt it too.
She demanded Leo be examined again.
Doctors found no signs of physical harm.
That mattered.
They refused to let fear invent injuries.
Still, detectives wanted Victoria’s explanation.
She finally agreed to an interview.
No recording shared publicly, but Ethan received limited information as Leo’s father.
Victoria admitted deleting videos.
“Why?”
Because she complained privately about Ethan while standing in the nursery.
She did not want him hearing.
Detectives asked whether any video showed her mistreating Leo.
“No.”
“Why test the iron?”
She answered:
“To see whether the camera captured steam clearly.”
“Why?”
“Because Grant wanted Ethan worried about household staff.”
There.
A direct link.
Grant had wanted Sarah fired too.
Not for personal reasons.
For access.
Sarah handled household mail.
Deliveries.
Visitors.
She noticed when Grant sent private couriers.
After marriage, Victoria and Grant intended to replace several longtime employees with staff loyal to them.
A household takeover preceding a corporate one.
Grant later admitted that part.
He called it “risk management.”
Ethan called it betrayal.
But Victoria insisted the steam test was supposed to support a staged negligence incident.
No baby harm.
The plan:
Place the iron safely several feet away.
Create visible steam.
Photograph it.
Claim Sarah left it near Leo.
Use the incident to fire Sarah.
The day Sarah caught her, Victoria said she had been testing how close steam needed to be to appear dramatic.
“Then why was Leo in the crib?” Detective Reyes asked.
Victoria claimed he woke unexpectedly.
“Why press the button again after he coughed?”
Silence.
That was the moment her legal explanation failed.
She could explain preparation.
Not the second press.
Not “Stop crying.”
Not refusing to move away.
Detectives asked what she felt.
Victoria finally said:
“Angry.”
At whom?
“Everyone.”
The baby?
“No.”
Then why press steam?
“I wanted him to stop.”
A terrible, simple answer.
Not a murder conspiracy.
An angry woman, already using a child as leverage in a larger plan, briefly treated his distress as an obstacle.
That was enough.
She did not need to intend lasting injury for the act to be dangerous.
Sarah heard the summary and felt something settle.
She had been searching for a grand explanation.
Sometimes the worst moment came from smaller corruption.
Once someone began thinking of a baby as leverage, his crying became inconvenience.
His fear became useful.
His safety became negotiable.
Then police found the source of the handwritten note.
Not Grant’s handwriting.
Not Victoria’s.
A document examiner matched it to someone else.
Ethan’s sister.
Julia.
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