What the Twins Really Saw
Chapter 02 - What the Twins Really Saw
The sound of the locks echoed through the mansion. Celeste froze. Rosa pulled Ava and Lily behind her while two private security guards waited for instructions.
Michael’s voice came through the ceiling speakers.
“No one leaves.”
Celeste stared at the nearest camera. She had believed Michael was hundreds of miles away. Recovering quickly, she claimed Rosa had stolen the necklace and frightened the children into defending her.
Michael instructed the guards to search no one and touch nothing. Then he came upstairs.
Ava ran to him, but Celeste stepped between them. She said the twins were exhausted and had recently invented stories about their mother returning. Rosa, she claimed, had encouraged the fantasies to gain their trust.
Michael knelt beside Lily. “Tell me what you remember.”
Lily pointed at Celeste. “She put Mommy’s necklace in Rosa’s cart.”
“She is six,” Celeste snapped.
Ava held up her stuffed rabbit. Inside was a small recorder Michael had installed after Lily began sleepwalking. It had captured Celeste’s command to lie.
Celeste reached for the rabbit. Rosa stopped her.
The attorney tried to leave, but the doors stayed locked. Michael displayed the forged trust transfer on the television. Celeste insisted he had signed it before his trip.
The digital signature was timestamped while Michael was on a recorded flight. The document also named Rosa as a witness, though she had never seen it.
Celeste changed her story again. She said Rosa had agreed to help, then demanded more money. The necklace, she claimed, was Rosa’s payment.
Rosa had worked for the family for eleven years and helped raise the twins after Hannah’s death. Michael asked whether she had recently found anything unusual.
Rosa admitted finding bank statements in Celeste’s dry-cleaning bag. Millions had moved from the twins’ trust into a shell company, but the papers vanished before she could show Michael.
Celeste’s expression finally cracked.
The attorney’s phone buzzed on the table. A message appeared across the screen:
Destroy the nursery camera archive before 7:00. The earlier footage cannot be seen.
Michael looked at the clock.
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It was 6:48.
He had captured the necklace, but Celeste was afraid of something recorded before that morning—something hidden in the nursery archive that could explain how Hannah had truly died.
