Chapter 2 - THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT
I did not sleep that night.
I sat in the nursery chair, Ethan asleep across my chest, his small heartbeat steady against mine. Every time he stirred, every time he whimpered in his sleep, my blood ran cold all over again. Dr. Bennett had examined him and declared him miraculously unharmed—bruised, frightened, but whole. A miracle, he had called it.
I called it something else. An answer to a prayer I had not yet finished speaking.
But Vivian’s words kept echoing through my mind, bouncing off the nursery walls until I thought I might go mad.
Ask your wife.
My wife. Elara.
Where had she been that evening? Why had she not come when Ethan fell?
I stood, settled Ethan carefully in his crib, and walked to the window. Rain still lashed the glass. Elara had left hours before the fall, saying she needed to visit her sister across town. She had promised to return before dark. Yet she had not come home. She had not called.
My phone lay silent on the dresser. No messages. No missed calls. Nothing.
At three in the morning, the front door finally opened.
I heard her footsteps in the hall—hurried, uneven, then halting as she saw the shattered stroller still resting near the staircase. I stepped into the hallway and watched her from the shadows. She wore the pale blue coat she had left in, her hair wind-tousled, her face pale. But as she stared at the wreckage, her expression shifted—not to horror, but to something unreadable. Relief? Fear? Or something worse?
“Adrian?” She turned and saw me standing there. Her voice wavered. “What happened? Why is the stroller—”
“Where were you, Elara?” I asked.
She blinked, taken aback by my tone. “At my sister’s. I told you I was going there. The roads were flooded, I had to take a long detour—”
“All night?” I stepped closer. “Six hours to drive thirty minutes? And not one single call to say you were delayed?”
Her eyes widened. “My phone died. I told you—”
“You told me nothing.” I pulled out my phone and played the security footage—the part where Vivian received that small black device from a shadowed hand. Elara watched it. She flinched. She pressed a hand to her mouth. But she did not name the man.
“Vivian said something before she left,” I told her quietly. “She said I should ask you who really wanted Ethan gone.”
Elara went perfectly still.
“That’s absurd. She’s lying to save herself.”
“Is she?” I stepped nearer. “Because whoever handed her that remote knew exactly when you would be gone, Elara. Exactly when no one but Vivian would be upstairs. Exactly when security would be distracted.”
Elara’s chin lifted. “Are you seriously suggesting I had anything to do with this? With my own son?”
“I am asking where you were,” I said. “And why Vivian thinks she can tie this to you.”
We stared at each other in the dim hallway. Rain beat against the roof. Somewhere upstairs, Ethan whimpered. Elara’s eyes filled with tears.
“I was at my sister’s,” she said, voice trembling. “Call her. She will tell you. But if you can stand there after everything and suspect me… then something is very wrong between us.”
She turned and hurried up the stairs, coat trailing behind her, leaving me standing alone beside the broken stroller.
May you like
I did not follow her. Instead I pulled up the footage once more. The shadowed man’s hand. The way he stood close enough to whisper to Vivian. The way Vivian nodded. And then it hit me—a detail I had missed before. On his wrist, a glint of silver. A heavy watch. One I had seen before.
On my wife’s brother.
