Chapter 8 - The Security Footage
The doubt in Ethan’s mind grew like a dark weed over the next twenty-four hours. He couldn't shake the image of Lily shrinking away from Noah when he entered the room, nor could he forget the brass key he had found in the grass.
At midnight, while both children were asleep, Ethan sat in his ground-floor study in front of his dual monitors.
The Sterling mansion was equipped with an advanced exterior security system, but the cameras facing the courtyard had been marked as "offline for maintenance" during the afternoon of the incident.
Ethan, a skilled technical researcher from his years in corporate litigation, opened the system’s backend log files. He bypassed the user interface and began digging into the raw data stored on the local hard drive.
Lines of code scrolled rapidly across the screen.
14:12:05 — CAMERA_04 (COURTYARD) — MANUAL OVERRIDE DISABLE.
USER ID: ADMIN_MOBILE_02.
Ethan’s breath hitched. ADMIN_MOBILE_02 was the tablet device he had bought for Noah’s educational games six months ago.
He manually extracted the cached video buffer files created five minutes before the override command was executed.
The screen flickered, and a low-resolution, wide-angle video clip began to play.
On the screen, the second-floor balcony was clearly visible under the bright daylight.
Noah was seen walking into his father’s study twenty minutes before the fall, taking the brass key from the unlocked desk drawer. The camera then captured Noah walking up to the balcony doors, unlocking them, and stepping outside.
A minute later, Lily walked onto the balcony holding her colored pencils. Noah took the pencils from her hand and threw them over the railing into the garden below. When Lily sat on the ledge to look down, Noah stepped behind her, grabbed her feet with both hands, and pulled hard.
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There was no struggle. There was no accident. It was a deliberate, cold, and calculated act.
Ethan stared at the glowing monitor, his face turning ghostly white, the blood draining from his lips as the truth crashed over him like a tidal wave.
