Chapter 2 - The Cloud Footage
The blue glow of my laptop screen illuminated the dark kitchen. My hands were steady, but inside, a violent tremor shook my core.
Three months ago, after a string of break-ins down the block, I had installed an enterprise-grade smart home system. Three 4K wide-angle lenses covered the first floor: one pointed at the front entry, another sweeping across the living room, and a third—tucked inconspicuously above the crown molding—giving a panoramic view of the kitchen and breakfast nook. Nobody paid attention to them. They were small matte-black domes, practically invisible against the dark walnut accents of our cabinetry. Lauren had laughed when the technicians installed them, calling me paranoid.
I logged into the encrypted cloud portal. My cursor hovered over the timestamp: 3:15 PM, right when I had left Grace in the care of my sister, my mother, and my father to run an urgent work errand.
I pulled up the kitchen camera feed and hit play.
The audio came through with nauseating clarity. Grace was sitting at the island, coloring in her sketchpad. She had hopped off the barstool to grab a glass of water from the counter. Her tiny elbow clipped a ceramic salad plate—an everyday five-dollar plate from Target. It slid off the edge and shattered against the hardwood.
Grace gasped, freezing in terror. "I’m sorry! Aunt Lauren, I’m sorry!"
Lauren strode into frame from the living room, her face twisted in rage. She wasn’t looking at the broken ceramic. She was looking at Grace with pure venom.
"You clumsy, useless little brat!" Lauren’s voice cut through my speakers like jagged glass.
Grace began to apologize again, her small hands shaking, but Lauren lunged forward. She didn’t just scold her. She snatched Grace’s pink-framed prescription glasses straight off the child’s face.
"You think you can just do whatever you want because your mother isn’t here?" Lauren snarled.
Grace reached out blindly. "Please, Aunt Lauren, I can't see! Give them back!"
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Lauren sneered, dropped the glasses onto the hardwood right next to the shards of the plate, and brought her heavy boot down with deliberate, crushing force. A sickening crunch echoed through the mic.
Sitting at my kitchen table, watching the monitor, the breath evacuated from my lungs. My fingernails bit into the palms of my hands until I tasted copper on my lip. But the nightmare on the screen had only just begun.
