The brass key slid into the bathroom lock with a dry, metallic click.

At midnight, huddled around Elena’s dining table, Greg connected his external hard drive to a high-definition monitor.

“Brandon used an off-the-shelf smart home app to manage his cameras,” Greg explained, his fingers flying across his mechanical keyboard. “He set the master hub to save all motion-triggered events to an encrypted AWS bucket. He thought his password was secure. It wasn't.”

Greg pressed play on a video file dated two weeks earlier.

The high-definition footage showed our living room. Brandon was pacing near the fireplace, holding a glass of bourbon. Rosalyn sat on the sofa, scrolling through a printed spreadsheet.

*“The trust document is clear, Brandon,”* Rosalyn’s voice came through the speakers, crisp and venomous. *“As long as Hannah is considered mentally competent, she decides every withdrawal. Arthur Vance won’t release a single cent to pay off your debts or save my house.”*

*“I know that, Mom!”* Brandon snapped, downing his drink. *“That’s why Thorne is essential. Thorne told me if we can show three distinct instances of irrational rage or paranoid ideation, he can write an emergency affidavit for court-ordered inpatient psychiatric evaluation. A seventy-two-hour psych hold is all we need to get the judge to sign temporary conservatorship.”*

*“And the pills?”* Rosalyn asked, leaning forward. *“Are you sure she won’t notice?”*

Brandon chuckled—a cold, arrogant sound that made my blood run ice-cold. *“I’ve been crushing two milligrams of Ativan into her breakfast smoothie. By noon, she’s so foggy she can barely remember what time she fed Liam. Then at night, I swap her decaf for espresso beans. She hasn't slept more than two consecutive hours in twenty days. Yesterday she couldn't find her car keys and she started crying. She’s almost at the breaking point.”*

Rosalyn smiled, a terrifyingly maternal grin. *“Good boy. When we take control of Liam’s estate, the first disbursement covers my mortgage. Then you take a half-million management fee. We’ll put Hannah in an out-of-state facility. She won’t have the money or the sanity to fight us.”*

The video cut off.

Silence hung heavy in the room.

My sister Sarah had her face buried in her hands, weeping softly in shock.

I sat frozen, staring at the frozen frame of my husband’s smiling face. For six weeks, I had questioned my own mind. I had stood in the nursery in the dead of night, looking at my reflection, wondering if I was truly failing as a mother—wondering if the exhaustion and the dizzy spells and the terrifying memory lapses were proof that I was broken inside.

I wasn’t broken. I had been systematically hunted.

“Elena,” I whispered, turning to look at my attorney. “Can we play this in court?”

Elena stood up, smoothing the front of her jacket. Her eyes were burning with cold, unrelenting fury.