The back garden.
The playroom.
The breakfast nook.
Every angle.
Every corner.
Every little secret scene within the house he had built and financed, and which, somehow, he had never quite come to understand.
“The cameras are live,” the guard said quietly.
Emiliano nodded and sat down.
“I want to see what happens when they think I’m gone.”
At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Rosa cleared the breakfast table.
The girls finished their milk.
A housekeeper brought up the folded towels.
One of the gardeners crossed the yard. Everything seemed painfully normal.
For a few minutes, Emiliano almost felt foolish.
Maybe Patricia had been wrong.
Maybe he’d let suspicion make him seem smaller than he wanted to be.
Maybe he was sitting in a dark room spying on an innocent woman because fear had weakened him.
Then the front door clicked shut for the last time after the last employee of the morning walked through the hall.
And Patricia appeared in the living room.
The change in her face was instantaneous.
No warm smile.
No refined grace.
No sweet, understanding fiancée demeanor.
It was like watching a mask slip off her face in real time.
Her whole body changed.
The sweetness vanished from her expression, replaced by something colder. Something sharp. Annoyed. Impatient. Cruel.
Emiliano leaned forward.
On the screen, Daniela sat on the rug with an open book in her lap. Martina was beside him, clutching a stuffed rabbit.
Patricia approached slowly.
“What did I tell you about sitting here?” she snapped.
Both girls jumped.
They weren’t scared.
Conditioned.
That’s what chilled Emiliano’s blood.
They weren’t children reacting to a raised voice for the first time.
They were children who knew exactly what was coming next.
Daniela closed her book immediately. Martina lowered her gaze.
Patricia snatched the rabbit from the girl’s hands and threw it onto the sofa.
“I’m tired of repeating myself,” she said. “When your father isn’t around, you’ll do what I say the first time.”
Martina’s lip trembled.
Daniela moved a little closer to her sister.
And in the monitoring room, Emiliano held his breath for a moment.
Because his daughters weren’t behaving like children being corrected by a future stepmother.
They behaved like children who were afraid of him.
Then Rosa entered the room.
She had probably heard Patricia’s voice from the hallway.
She entered carefully, without aggression or confrontation, simply protecting them enough to stand between Patricia and the girls without being noticed.
“Miss Patricia,” Rosa said gently, “the girls haven’t done anything wrong.”
Patricia turned toward her so quickly it almost seemed violent.
“Did I ask for your opinion?”
Rosa remained motionless.
“No, ma’am.”
“Then remember your place.”
The room fell silent.
On the screen, Daniela had reached out to Martina.
Emiliano stared at that small detail longer than anything else.
Not the argument.
Not Patricia’s face.
Not even Rosa’s intervention.
It was the way his daughters immediately sought each other out.
As if this had happened before.
As if they already knew how to prepare for it. And suddenly, Emiliano felt nauseous.
Because for all those months, Patricia had been whispering in his ear that Rosa was dangerous… He’d never wondered why his daughters had become quieter.
Why they looked at him with that strange mix of love and distance.
Why the house had started to feel colder long before he admitted it.
Comment YES if you want part two.
