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I hung up on Eleanor. I didn't offer an excuse or an apology. I just let the dial tone sever her panic and dropped the phone onto the desk.

Now it was 1:15 AM. The house was a tomb. Chloe was asleep down the hall. Julian was supposedly in a hotel room in downtown Chicago. I sat cross-legged on our king-sized bed, the mattress cold on his side, the only light coming from the harsh white glare of my laptop.

The smart hub application was open. The connection to the Oak Brook camera was entirely firewalled, locked behind a localized master PIN. Julian had registered the system from the primary email, assuming I would never dig past the archived trash folder. He assumed my domestic competence ended exactly where his digital privacy began.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. The air in the bedroom felt thick, tasting faintly of his leftover cedar cologne.

Four digits. Three attempts before a lockout.

I typed his mother’s birth year.

*Access Denied.* A red warning banner flashed across the screen. Two attempts remaining. My pulse hammered against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. If I locked the system, it would send an automated security alert directly to his phone. He would know I was looking.

I wiped my sweating palms on my pajama pants. I needed to think like Julian. Not the corporate architect. Not the devoted father. I needed to think like the narcissist who built a secret life forty miles away and funded it through his family's generational trust.

Our anniversary? No. Too sentimental for a burner house. Chloe’s birthday? No.

I typed the street number of the Oak Brook address, the one I had memorized from the property parcel search.

*Access Denied.*

One attempt remaining.

The red banner pulsed. A drop of sweat traced a cold line down my spine. The truth was locked behind this screen. The exact truth Eleanor was protecting with her weaponized silence.

I closed my eyes. What was his default? What was the core sequence to his phone, his laptop, his private safe in the study downstairs? The four digits he fell back on when he didn't want to think.

It was the month and year he landed his first major solo commission. The moment he proved to Arthur and Eleanor that he was a genius.

I typed 0416.

I hit enter.

The red banner vanished. A green checkmark appeared. *Authenticating.*

The loading wheel spun in the center of the dark window. One second. Two. The silence in my bedroom was absolute, heavy with the weight of fifteen years of obedience about to shatter.

The screen flickered. The static dissolved into hyper-clear night vision.

The nursery.

The custom matte blue walls. The white crib. The plush, expensive rug perfectly centered on the hardwood floor.

She was there.

The woman sat in the white upholstered rocking chair, angled slightly away from the lens. She was wearing a loose silk robe. The baby was propped against her shoulder, a tiny hand tangled in her dark, wavy hair. She held a thick board book in her free hand, pointing to the pages. Her lips moved in a slow, rhythmic cadence. Reading a bedtime story. Creating a perfectly domestic memory.

My throat closed entirely. I pressed my hand against my mouth to trap the ragged, ugly sound clawing its way up my windpipe.

She leaned back, resting her head against the chair. The baby shifted, cooing softly.

The woman turned her head toward the camera lens to adjust her collar. The infrared light caught the heavy piece of jewelry resting perfectly against her collarbone.

It was a teardrop cut, surrounded by a halo of tiny diamonds on a thick platinum chain.

She was wearing the custom emerald pendant Julian said was lost in the move five years ago.