Chapter 2 - The Silent Witness
By afternoon, the greenhouse mess had been swept into heavy-duty trash bins by the remaining staff, and the estate had returned to its chillingly pristine veneer. Julian retreated to his second-floor study to take international calls, leaving me alone in the expansive sunroom with our two-year-old son, Leo.
Leo was usually a ball of high-pitched energy, babbling and chasing his wooden toys across the Persian rugs. But today, he was abnormally quiet. He sat cross-legged near the French doors, clutching a crushed plastic toy car in one hand while staring intently at the glass door leading out to the patio.
I walked over, kneeling down beside him, and brushed a stray curl from his forehead. “What is it, sweetie? Are you still scared from the big noise this morning?”
Leo didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached out with his tiny, trembling fingers and pointed directly at the second-floor window of Julian’s study. Then, he whispered something that made my blood run instantly cold.
“Bad man cut the roof. Daddy said don't tell.”
I froze, the air catching sharply in my throat. I grabbed Leo’s small shoulders gently. “Leo, what did you say? What did Daddy say?”
The boy instinctively shrank back, pressing his back against the sofa, suddenly looking terrified in a way no two-year-old should ever look. He didn't repeat the words. He just buried his face in my skirt, whimpering softly.
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My mind raced into a tailspin. Leo was too young to lie, too innocent to fabricate a sentence about cutting a roof. If Julian had been up in the study, and Leo had witnessed something through the high-angle bay windows overlooking the greenhouse...
Was Clara entirely innocent? Had Julian intentionally sabotaged his own multi-thousand-dollar glass pavilion? And if so, why? Why frame a defenseless maid for an industrial accident?
