Chapter 2 - The Recording Michael Couldn’t Undo

Emily was taken to St. Matthew’s Medical Center.

The baby’s heartbeat remained strong.

Doctors found bruising, a badly strained shoulder, and contractions caused by trauma, but no immediate placental separation.

They admitted her for observation.

Michael remained outside her room.

Emily refused to let him enter.

He did not argue.

For the first time since the staircase, he seemed to understand that apology was not access.

Mason sat with Emily’s older cousin Rachel while police questioned Sophia at the mansion.

Sophia denied deliberately pushing Emily.

“She lost her balance and grabbed me.”

Detective Lena Torres looked at the security camera recording.

Then played it again.

Sophia clearly grabbed Emily.

Clearly shoved.

Clearly dropped herself onto the upper landing only after hearing Michael arrive.

Sophia’s story collapsed in less than ninety seconds.

She was arrested for assault.

Michael watched from the foyer.

He looked sick.

Detective Torres turned to him.

“You struck your wife afterward?”

Michael closed his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I believed Sophia.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Michael looked at the floor.

“Yes. I struck Emily.”

He made no attempt to minimize it.

Detective Torres recorded the admission.

Then she asked about the red folder Mason mentioned.

Michael frowned.

“I don’t know.”

“You own this house.”

“My wife manages most household records.”

“Could this be financial?”

“Maybe.”

Thomas Hale, the Reed family’s longtime security manager, entered carrying a tablet.

“There’s more footage.”

Michael turned.

“How much?”

“Three months of archived video.”

“From that camera?”

“Yes.”

Michael stared.

The staircase camera had been installed after Mason once slipped while running downstairs.

Nobody paid much attention to it.

Apparently Sophia had forgotten it existed.

Thomas opened the previous night’s footage.

1:14 a.m.

Sophia entered through the side door.

She used a key.

Michael’s expression hardened.

“I took her key last year.”

Thomas paused the recording.

“She still has one.”

Sophia walked directly upstairs.

She entered Michael’s office.

Twenty-three minutes later she emerged carrying nothing.

Then another clip.

Two weeks earlier.

Sophia entered while Michael and Emily were at a prenatal appointment.

Again, she went to the office.

Another.

Four weeks earlier.

Same pattern.

Michael felt cold.

“She’s been searching the house.”

Detective Torres asked, “For what?”

Michael thought of Mason.

The red folder.

He called Rachel.

“Put Mason on.”

The boy answered quietly.

“Dad?”

“Buddy, I need to ask you something. What red folder were you talking about?”

“Mom’s.”

“Where did you see it?”

“She put it under the books in Grandpa’s room.”

Michael froze.

His late father’s study had been closed for nearly two years.

“Did Mom say what was inside?”

“No.”

“Did Aunt Sophia see her hide it?”

Mason hesitated.

“I think so.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because Aunt Sophia was behind the door.”

Michael went still.

“When?”

“Last week.”

“You saw her?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

Mason’s voice became smaller.

“She told me Dad would get mad at me for spying.”

Michael closed his eyes.

Sophia had been manipulating his son too.

“Buddy, you did nothing wrong.”

“I know now.”

Michael had never hated himself more than he did in that moment.

He had spent years assuming Sophia was impulsive but harmless.

Emily had warned him repeatedly.

Sophia showed up without calling.

Borrowed money.

Questioned Emily’s decisions.

Undermined her in front of Mason.

Every time Emily complained, Michael called it family tension.

Every time Sophia cried, he defended her.

And on the staircase, he had completed the pattern in the ugliest way possible.

He had not asked.

He had not listened.

He had hit his pregnant wife.

Thomas interrupted.

“We checked the office.”

“The folder?”

“Gone.”

Michael’s jaw tightened.

“When?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Then Detective Torres received a call from the hospital.

Her expression changed.

“What?”

She looked at Michael.

“Mrs. Reed asked officers to collect evidence from her hospital room.”

“What evidence?”

“A sealed envelope she says someone pushed underneath her door thirty minutes ago.”

Michael stared.

“Who?”

“She didn’t see them.”

“What’s inside?”

Torres hesitated.

“Copies of bank transfers from Reed Family Holdings.”

Michael felt a chill.

“To whom?”

She read from her notes.

“Your sister.”

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Sophia had received more than nine hundred thousand dollars from accounts Michael believed had been closed after his father’s death.

If Sophia had secretly been receiving money from a dead man’s accounts, what had Emily discovered that frightened her enough to hide the evidence before Sophia attacked her?