Chapter 4 - The Man on the CameraCeline did not plug in the flash drive.
Not that night.
Hannah forbade it.
“Treat it as evidence,” she said. “Don’t alter metadata if we may need forensic analysis.”
Bryce laughed bitterly.
“Evidence. Listen to yourself.”
Celine ignored him.
Twenty minutes later, two officers arrived after Bryce refused her first request to leave.
The conversation was painfully calm.
There had been no physical violence.
Bryce maintained that he resided in the mansion as Celine’s husband.
Celine maintained that she wanted space.
Hannah, still on speakerphone, explained that removing a spouse from a residence could involve legal procedures depending on occupancy rights, even when the underlying property was separate.
Bryce finally agreed to stay at a hotel.
Not because he had suddenly become considerate.
Because he understood how bad it would look if the argument escalated in front of police.
At the entrance, he turned toward Celine.
“You’ll regret letting Mara poison this.”
Mara stood halfway up the staircase.
Celine looked at him.
“Mara did not put herself in my wardrobe.”
His eyes flicked toward Biscuit.
Then toward the study.
“You have no idea who you’re trusting.”
Celine replied quietly.
“I know exactly who I stopped trusting tonight.”
Bryce left.
Celine changed the alarm code.
Then she locked the study.
Mara slept in a guest room at Celine’s insistence.
Neither woman wanted to be near the other, but Celine did not want Mara leaving with information she had not yet shared.
At 8:05 the next morning, Hannah arrived.
She carried two laptops, three legal pads, and the expression of someone who had already been awake for hours.
She hugged Celine once.
No questions.
No comforting clichés.
Then she went to work.
The flash drive went into an evidence bag.
Copies of the documents were made.
Hannah contacted the county recorder’s office and Atlas Crest Capital’s fraud department.
No deed of trust had yet been recorded.
The lender placed an immediate hold on the file.
Celine should have felt relief.
Instead, she felt worse.
Someone had gotten close.
Very close.
By ten, Hannah had arranged for a digital forensics consultant to image the flash drive without altering it.
While they waited, Celine remembered the mansion’s security system.
“There are cameras.”
Hannah looked up.
“Inside?”
“Exterior, hallways, front entrance, service entrance. Not bedrooms.”
“Do you have cloud access?”
“Bryce usually managed it.”
Hannah’s eyes narrowed.
“Try.”
Celine opened the security app.
Her password failed.
She tried again.
Failed.
“Bryce changed it.”
“Call the provider.”
Forty minutes later, after identity verification and a reset code sent to Celine’s registered email, they regained access.
The system kept thirty days of cloud recordings.
Celine searched yesterday.
At 2:14 p.m., while she was in Chicago, a silver sedan entered the driveway.
A woman stepped out carrying a leather document case.
Mara leaned closer to the screen.
“That’s her.”
“Who?”
“Elise.”
“The notary?”
“I saw her once before.”
Hannah paused the footage.
“Bryce told us Celine signed preliminary papers weeks ago.”
“He lied.”
They watched.
Elise entered through the front door.
Bryce greeted her.
Twenty-three minutes later, she left.
Celine’s stomach tightened.
She searched backward.
Eight days earlier, another car.
Nolan.
Celine had met him dozens of times.
Bryce’s closest business friend.
Always charming.
Always expensive.
Always telling Celine how lucky Bryce was.
He entered carrying a laptop.
He left ninety minutes later.
Then again four days before that.
Then two weeks earlier.
Celine whispered, “Why was Nolan coming here when I wasn’t home?”
Mara sat rigidly.
“I didn’t know about all of those.”
Hannah looked at her.
“Which ones did you know about?”
Mara swallowed.
“Two.”
Celine turned.
“You let him in?”
“One time.”
“Why?”
“Bryce told me he was coming for business.”
“While I was away?”
“Yes.”
Celine returned to the footage.
Then Biscuit appeared onscreen.
On one recording, the dog followed Nolan through the hallway.
Nolan stopped outside Celine’s mother’s old sitting room.
A room now used for storage.
Bryce came from the opposite direction carrying a gray archive box.
Celine leaned closer.
“I know that box.”
Hannah looked at her.
“What is it?”
“My mother’s estate records.”
Bryce handed it to Nolan.
Nolan opened the lid.
Then both men walked into the study.
Celine’s eyes filled with tears.
The affair was personal.
This felt surgical.
Bryce had not just slept with someone under her roof.
He had opened her dead mother’s records to another man.
“Keep watching,” Hannah said quietly.
Celine did.
Nine minutes later, Bryce walked down the hallway again.
This time he held something small.
A framed photograph.
He turned it facedown on a console table before returning to the study.
Celine recognized the frame.
A picture of her and her older brother, Julian, taken when they were teenagers.
She had not spoken to Julian in nearly two years.
Not since the fight before her wedding.
Bryce hated seeing his photograph.
Celine had always assumed it was because Julian had never approved of him.
Now the gesture looked darker.
“Why did he do that?” Hannah murmured.
Celine didn’t answer.
She moved to another recording.
Three weeks earlier.
Bryce entered the study with Nolan.
At 11:32 a.m., Mara followed.
She carried Celine’s brown leather document binder.
Celine stared at her.
Mara looked sick.
“That was one of the times.”
“What’s in that binder?”
“Your passport copy. Old tax papers. Insurance records.”
“And?”
Mara lowered her eyes.
“Samples of your signature.”
Hannah stopped typing.
Celine looked at Mara.
“Why would he need samples?”
Mara whispered, “He said the bank was updating records.”
Celine laughed once.
A broken sound.
“And you believed him?”
“At first.”
“When did you stop believing him?”
“When Nolan said they needed three versions.”
Celine’s heart beat harder.
“Three versions of what?”
Mara looked toward the floor.
“Your signature.”
The room went cold.
Hannah asked, “Did you see them copying it?”
“No. But I heard them arguing about which one looked most natural.”
Celine stood so quickly her chair scraped backward.
She walked to the window.
Biscuit followed and sat beside her.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Hannah’s phone rang.
The digital forensics consultant.
She answered.
Listened.
Her expression changed.
“What is it?” Celine asked.
Hannah held up one finger.
“Yes,” she said into the phone. “Preserve everything. Send me only the inventory for now.”
She ended the call.
“What?” Celine repeated.
Hannah looked at her.
“The flash drive contains scanned estate documents, copies of your identification, lender forms, several images of your signature…”
Celine waited.
“And?”
Hannah hesitated.
“An email archive.”
“Whose?”
“Bryce’s.”
Celine’s throat tightened.
Hannah turned the laptop toward herself.
“The consultant searched keywords from the loan documents.”
“And?”
“He found emails between Bryce and Nolan going back almost three years.”
Celine blinked.
Three years.
She and Bryce had been married for two.
“What were they talking about?”
Hannah looked at the preliminary file inventory.
May you like
Then lifted her eyes.
“They were talking about your house before Bryce ever proposed to you.”
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