Chapter 2
Vanessa reached for the tablet.
I lifted it out of her reach.
“Daniel,” she said carefully. “You need to calm down.”
Calm.
She said it like she had already practiced the sentence.
Like she had been waiting for the moment when I would become angry enough to make her story believable.
I looked at Mason.
“Did she know you were recording?”
He shook his head.
“She thinks I only play games.”
Vanessa’s eyes narrowed.
“Mason, you don’t understand adult things.”
He stepped behind me.
That movement hurt.
A child hiding from his own mother behind the man she had planned to manipulate.
I turned to Lily.
“Go upstairs with Mason.”
Vanessa snapped, “No.”
I looked at her.
“Yes.”
My voice was quiet.
That made her freeze.
Lily held Mason’s hand.
They ran upstairs together.
The moment their footsteps disappeared, Vanessa changed.
The soft wife vanished.
The mask dropped.
“You have no idea what you just interrupted.”
“I heard enough.”
“No, you heard a child’s edited video.”
“You starved my daughter.”
“She missed one meal.”
“The videos show more than one.”
Her face tightened.
“She is spoiled. She cries for attention. You never discipline her because her mother died.”
My first wife, Amelia, had died three years earlier.
Lily had been two.
I had thought Vanessa understood grief.
Now I wondered if she had studied it.
I held up the tablet.
“What court date?”
She crossed her arms.
“A custody review.”
“For who?”
“For Lily.”
My stomach turned.
“There is no custody review.”
“There will be.”
“What did you do?”
Vanessa smiled.
Small.
Cruel.
“I filed a concern report.”
I stared at her.
“You what?”
“I reported that Lily shows signs of emotional disturbance. Food obsession. Attachment issues. Aggression toward Mason.”
“Mason has been feeding her.”
“Because she manipulates him.”
I almost stepped toward her.
Then I saw the camera in the corner of the dining room.
The camera I had installed after a package theft.
Vanessa saw my eyes move.
Her smile returned.
“Go ahead,” she whispered. “Yell. Hit a wall. Prove me right.”
I took one breath.
Then another.
I pulled out my phone and called my attorney.
Vanessa’s smile faded.
“Daniel.”
I spoke into the phone.
“Rachel, I need you at my house tonight. My wife has been withholding food from Lily and building a false custody case.”
Vanessa lunged.
May you like
I stepped back.
The dining room camera recorded everything.
