Chapter 7 - The person inside my home
We didn't return home.
Victor moved Sophia and me to a secure Sterling residence.
Sophia believed we were having an adventure.
I let her.
She didn't need our nightmare.
Security searched my house.
No forced entry.
No unknown fingerprints.
Nothing missing.
Whoever photographed Sophia had access.
Our housekeeper?
Nanny?
Dominic?
Then investigators found a dormant camera inside a smoke detector.
Installed four years earlier.
Four years.
This wasn't about tonight.
Somebody had watched my daughter almost her entire life.
Amelia asked whether Noah might also be watched.
He was.
A tracker was discovered inside his backpack.
That changed her anger.
She and I weren't rivals anymore.
We were two mothers whose children had been turned into leverage.
Dominic sat alone.
Neither woman comforted him.
Then S7 revealed another file.
NOAH MERCER.
Not Noah Grant.
Mercer.
His birth certificate in Amelia's possession listed Dominic Grant.
But an older hospital record listed:
Father unknown.
Dominic looked confused.
Amelia went pale.
“Don't.”
I stared at her.
“Don't what?”
She whispered:
“Dominic isn't Noah's biological father.”
Dominic stood so violently his chair overturned.
“What?”
Amelia started crying.
Before reconciling with Dominic years earlier, she'd had a brief relationship.
She became pregnant.
Dominic knew.
He offered to raise Noah.
For all his lies, he'd genuinely become the boy's father.
“Who was biological father?”
She refused.
Until Victor opened another S7 record.
Genetic compatibility assessment.
Noah's DNA had been secretly compared against someone in the Sterling family.
Match probability:
99.98%.
My blood went cold.
Amelia looked at Alexander.
My eldest brother closed his eyes.
Dominic whispered:
May you like
“You?”
Alexander didn't deny it.
