Chapter 3 - The Neighbor’s Lens
Mrs. Walsh reached me, her face pale with shock as she took in the jagged mess of my hair and the trembling state of my hands.
"Oh, my dear child... what on earth did she do to you?" Mrs. Walsh gasped, pulling me gently away from the stone wall of the estate.
Before I could force words past my dry lips, I pointed a shaking finger across the street toward her house. " Mrs. Walsh... your camera. Did it catch that?"
Mrs. Walsh followed my line of sight to the smart doorbell device mounted by her garage door. Her expression shifted from deep sympathy to sudden, steely realization. She pulled her smartphone out of her pocket with hurried fingers, tapped rapidly across the screen, and accessed the live cloud playback log.
"It records 24/7 with wide-angle high-definition audio," Mrs. Walsh whispered urgently, spinning the screen toward me. "Olivia, look at this. You need to see what it recorded."
She pressed play. The video loaded instantly, displaying a crystal-clear, wide-angle shot of the Caldwell front steps. The audio kicked in first—Victoria’s voice carrying sharp and clear through the morning air, ordering me away and shouting about a temple for strays. Then, the video played back the moments right before the door opened, showing the exact timing of my expulsion and the cruel, gloating sneer on Victoria's face.
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"She didn't just throw you out; she publicly humiliated you and documented her own malice," Mrs. Walsh said, her voice shaking with righteous anger. "Come inside my house right now. We are downloading every second of this footage to a secure flash drive."
Sitting in Mrs. Walsh’s warm, sunlit kitchen while holding a cup of hot tea, the numbness in my chest began to dissolve, replaced by a cold, calculating determination. Victoria thought she had erased me before Ethan returned from Chicago. She thought her wealth and pedigree would shield her from consequences. But she had made one fatal mistake: she forgot that modern cameras don't care about last names.
