Chapter 3 - The Broken Alibi
Caroline’s face didn't blanch, but a microscopic twitch near her left eye betrayed her instantly. She quickly recovered, pulling her coat tighter around herself with an air of affected exhaustion. "The basement? Julian, are you drunk? What on earth are you talking about? I’ve been in Zurich for three weeks closing a multi-million-dollar acquisition. If the basement is messy, that’s Cynthia’s fault, not mine."
"Zurich," I repeated, the word tasting like ash. I set my glass down, the crystal clinking softly against the wood. "A brilliant cover. Beautiful hotels, high-end galas, and an off-site IP address securely routed through a dedicated satellite tunnel straight to your personal tablet."
I gestured to Thorne, who stepped forward and placed the tactical tablet squarely on the center of the coffee table. The screen flickered to life, projecting a high-definition, looped archive of the living room floor—the exact camera angle that had broadcast my daughter’s starvation and humiliation directly to a luxury penthouse suite in Switzerland.
"For five months, Caroline, you claimed you were traveling for corporate expansion," I said, stepping away from the bar and walking slowly toward her. "Yet every single day at 4:00 PM local time, your private device logged into our home surveillance feed. You didn't just watch her starve. You timed it. You instructed Cynthia on how far to push the deprivation before I came home from my workshop."
Cynthia gasped, taking a sharp step backward from her sister. "Caroline... you said he wouldn't notice! You said he was too stupid to check the servers!"
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Caroline shot a murderous glare at Cynthia, the fragile alliance between the sisters instantly shattering under the weight of exposure. "Shut your pathetic mouth, Cynthia!" Caroline screamed, before turning back to me with a manufactured tear in her eye. "Julian, please. They manipulated me. Cynthia said Lily needed discipline, that I was too soft. I'm your wife!"
"You were an arrangement," I corrected, my voice freezing the air in the room. "And your lease has officially expired."
