Chapter 10 - The Third Man
By mid-week, the tension within the Carrington household had reached a breaking point. Ethan had hired a private security firm to conduct a full sweep of the property, but they found no evidence of forced entry or unauthorized access. To Ethan, Claire’s behavior appeared increasingly erratic, driven by stress and guilt over the incident at the pool.
However, unknown to both Ethan and Claire, a third party had been watching the estate from afar. Parked in a dark sedan at the edge of the estate's tree line, a man sat watching the mansion through high-powered binoculars. He took detailed notes on every individual entering and leaving the property, his focus resting particularly long on Lily whenever she appeared near the windows.
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Inside the mansion, Lily sat at the window seat of her playroom, looking straight through the glass toward the distant tree line. She held a pair of toy opera glasses to her eyes, but her gaze was sharp and focused. She had spotted the sedan three days ago; it was the same vehicle that used to park near her Montessori school before her mother died.
Her mother had always told her that if she ever saw the dark sedan again, it meant the time had come to execute "Plan B." Lily reached down, pulled the microchip out of her locket, and inserted it into the card slot of a small, modified handheld learning tablet her mother had gifted her on her fifth birthday—a device that was far more than a simple child's toy.
