Chapter 5 - The Camera Behind the Books
The hidden camera was smaller than Gabriel's thumb.
That was the part he hated most.
Something so small had entered his daughter's nursery, disappeared behind a row of children's books, and watched Emma every day without anyone noticing.
Dominic placed the evidence sleeve under the desk lamp.
Gabriel did not touch it.
“Is it transmitting?”
“It was.”
“To where?”
“We're tracing it.”
“When was it installed?”
“The battery model suggests within the last month.”
Gabriel looked toward the hallway.
“Who has access to the nursery?”
Dominic gave him a flat look.
“Half the household.”
Gabriel knew the answer before asking.
Housekeepers.
Family.
Therapists.
Nannies.
Security.
Guests accompanied by staff.
A large house created the illusion of control while multiplying doors.
“Pull every hallway camera.”
“I already started.”
Gabriel stood.
“And search the rest of the house.”
Dominic nodded.
“No visible sweep.”
“Agreed.”
“If they know we found one, they'll remove the others.”
Dominic left to coordinate the search.
Gabriel remained beside the desk.
He had spent years making sure people outside his family understood the consequences of invading his privacy.
The idea that someone inside the house had watched Emma beside his sleeping child created a different kind of anger.
It felt personal in a way business threats never did.
He went upstairs.
Emma was sitting on the floor of the guest playroom because Gabriel had temporarily moved the girls away from the nursery.
Lily was stacking rings.
Ava was wearing a blanket as a cape.
Emma looked up when he entered.
“You found something.”
It was not a question.
Gabriel closed the door behind him.
“A camera.”
Emma's face changed.
“In the nursery?”
“Yes.”
She looked toward Lily.
“Your camera?”
“No.”
Emma went completely still.
Gabriel watched her process the meaning.
“Where was it pointed?”
He considered lying.
He decided she deserved better.
“At your chair.”
Emma's skin lost color.
For several seconds she said nothing.
Then she stood too quickly and had to steady herself against the sofa.
Gabriel moved forward instinctively.
She lifted one hand.
“I'm fine.”
He stopped.
“No, you're not.”
Emma looked at the closed door.
“Who would do that?”
“I don't know yet.”
“Was it recording when I changed Lily?”
Gabriel's stomach turned.
“We don't know what was stored.”
Emma's eyes filled with humiliation rather than fear.
Gabriel understood immediately why.
She had believed the nursery was private enough to care for a baby, change clothes, take calls about her mother's health, and sit for five quiet minutes when the girls slept.
Someone had stolen that privacy.
“I want to leave.”
Gabriel's first reaction was refusal.
He stopped himself before saying it.
Emma was not a prisoner in his home.
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Where will you go?”
“My apartment.”
“That address is in your employment file.”
Emma looked at him.
“You think whoever did this might follow me?”
“I don't know.”
“That seems to be the answer to everything tonight.”
There was frustration in her voice now.
Gabriel accepted it.
She had earned more truth than he could currently provide.
“I can put you in a hotel under another name.”
Emma gave a short, humorless laugh.
“One of your hotels?”
“Yes.”
“So the same people who have access to this house can look at the reservation system?”
Gabriel felt an unexpected flicker of pride.
She was thinking clearly while frightened.
“Fair point.”
“I'll go home.”
“I'll have Dominic assign someone outside.”
“No.”
“Emma.”
“No men sitting in a black SUV outside my building.”
Ava looked over from beneath her blanket cape.
“What's a SUV?”
Emma immediately softened.
“A big car.”
“Oh.”
Ava went back to being a queen.
Gabriel lowered his voice.
“You need protection.”
“I need my life to stop becoming stranger every hour.”
Gabriel had no answer to that.
He moved toward the window.
“Stay until morning.”
Emma shook her head.
“Mr. Moretti.”
“Gabriel.”
She blinked.
He rarely invited employees to use his first name.
“Just tonight.”
His voice was quieter now.
“Give me one night to understand what this is.”
Emma looked at Lily.
Lily held up a blue ring and smiled.
Emma closed her eyes briefly.
“One night.”
Emma did not sleep much after learning about the hidden camera.
She stayed in a guest room near the girls with the door locked and a chair pushed lightly beneath the handle even though security stood in the hall.
Every ordinary action felt newly exposed.
She remembered changing out of a wet blouse after Lily spilled juice.
She remembered crying quietly after a hospital billing call about her mother.
She remembered sitting in the nursery at midnight one evening because Lily had a fever and would not sleep unless Emma hummed the same song repeatedly.
None of those moments were shameful.
That almost made the violation worse.
Privacy was not something people deserved only when they were doing something secret.
It was the right to have an unobserved self.
At 3:10 a.m., she heard a soft knock.
Gabriel's voice came through the door.
“It's me.”
Emma did not open immediately.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
She frowned.
“Then why are you here?”
“Ava woke up asking for you.”
Emma moved the chair and opened the door.
Gabriel stood in the hallway holding a sleepy Ava against his shoulder.
The toddler's hair was wild.
She reached for Emma.
Emma took her automatically.
“Bad dream?”
Ava nodded.
“Camera monster.”
Emma looked at Gabriel.
He looked stricken.
Someone had spoken too openly near the child.
Emma carried Ava into the guest room and sat on the bed.
“There is no camera monster.”
Ava pointed toward the ceiling.
“Bad camera.”
Emma chose her words carefully.
“Sometimes grown-ups put things where they should not.”
“Daddy took it away?”
“Yes.”
Ava looked at Gabriel.
“All gone?”
Gabriel crouched beside the bed.
“All gone from your room.”
The distinction was precise because he would not promise what he could not prove.
Ava accepted it.
Within minutes she fell asleep against Emma.
Gabriel remained near the doorway.
“I am sorry,” he said.
Emma looked up.
“For what?”
“For letting my house become a place where she knows the phrase bad camera.”
Emma's anger softened.
“You didn't teach her that.”
“No.”
“But I was supposed to know what happened here.”
Emma looked at the sleeping child.
“Then know it now.”
Gabriel met her eyes.
The words were simple.
They would become the standard he used for everything that followed.
“Thank you.”
She looked back at him.
“Don't thank me yet.”
The forensic team worked until after two in the morning.
They found no additional cameras in the children's rooms.
They did, however, find a second device taped beneath a shelf in the small staff lounge.
That camera had been aimed at the lockers.
The search of the staff lounge also revealed why Emma had never noticed the second camera.
It had been placed beneath a shelf used for spare uniforms, angled through a gap no wider than a finger.
Dominic reconstructed the view on his laptop.
The lens could see Emma's locker, the table where staff took breaks, and part of the corridor mirror.
It could not see the room as a whole.
Someone had chosen the angle for a purpose.
Gabriel watched footage of ordinary moments that suddenly felt intrusive.
Emma changing shoes after walking through rain.
Rosa slipping an orange into Emma's bag.
Two housekeepers complaining quietly about a broken dryer.
Nothing criminal.
Nothing scandalous.
Yet any clip could be cut until context disappeared.
Dominic paused on a moment when Emma sat with her head in her hands.
“What was happening there?” Gabriel asked.
Emma looked at the timestamp.
“My mother had been admitted overnight.”
Gabriel looked at the image again.
A hostile editor could call it instability.
The real explanation was exhaustion and fear.
He understood why the hidden cameras mattered beyond privacy.
They were not collecting truth.
They were collecting fragments that could be rearranged into accusation.
Emma watched herself on the screen for several seconds.
Then she said, “Turn it off.”
Dominic did immediately.
Gabriel noticed the relief in her face.
From that moment, he ordered investigators to review only footage directly relevant to identified incidents whenever possible.
Finding evidence did not require everyone to lose the rest of their privacy too.
Dominic brought Gabriel the memory module.
“This one stores locally.”
“Can you read it?”
“We already did.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“What is on it?”
“Mostly staff coming and going.”
“Mostly?”
Dominic opened a laptop.
The footage showed Emma entering the staff lounge eleven days earlier.
She placed her bag in a locker and left.
Three minutes later, Marco entered.
Gabriel's cousin looked around the empty room.
Then he walked directly to Emma's locker.
He used a key.
Gabriel leaned closer.
Marco removed something from his pocket and slipped it into the side compartment of Emma's bag.
“What is that?”
Dominic zoomed in.
The image was blurry but recognizable.
A small prescription bottle.
Gabriel's expression hardened.
“Was anything found in her bag?”
“No.”
“Then where did it go?”
The video answered the question.
Six minutes later, Rosa entered the room.
She opened a different locker.
Then she noticed Emma's bag partly unzipped.
Rosa looked toward the door, reached inside, found the bottle, stared at the label, and shoved it into her apron pocket.
Gabriel looked at Dominic.
“Rosa knew.”
“It appears so.”
“Why didn't she say anything?”
“Maybe she was scared.”
Gabriel thought of Emma's words in the kitchen.
Maybe she needs her job too.
He called Rosa at home.
She answered on the fourth ring, her voice thick with sleep.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“I need you at the house.”
There was a pause.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
Then Rosa asked the question that confirmed everything.
“Did you find the cameras?”
Gabriel's eyes met Dominic's.
“You knew about them?”
Rosa started crying quietly on the other end.
“I knew something was wrong.”
“Come to the house.”
“Mr. Moretti, I have children.”
“So do I.”
“I can't lose my job.”
“You won't.”
“You don't understand.”
Her voice dropped.
“They said they could ruin my husband's immigration case.”
Gabriel became very still.
“Who said that?”
Rosa breathed shakily.
“I can't say on the phone.”
The line went dead.
Gabriel called back.
No answer.
Dominic was already moving.
“I'll send someone.”
Gabriel followed him into the hall.
“Quietly.”
Dominic nodded.
Twenty minutes later, the security team reached Rosa's apartment.
The lights were on.
Her front door was unlocked.
Rosa was gone.
Her phone lay on the kitchen floor.
Gabriel stared at the message Dominic sent from the scene.
Then another message arrived.
It contained a photograph.
Rosa's kitchen table.
On it sat the prescription bottle Marco had planted in Emma's bag.
Beside it was a handwritten note.
Gabriel enlarged the image.
May you like
The note contained only six words.
ASK WHAT HAPPENED TO LUCA'S TRUST.
