Victoria shrank back slightly under Marcus's intense glare, but she quickly tried to regain her composure, forcing more fake tears to stream down her cheeks. She held her hands out defensively, trying to step closer to Marcus to place herself between him and his injured wife. She believed that if she repeated her story with enough conviction, the initial confusion and panic would force Marcus to take her side or at least hesitate long enough for an ambulance to clear the scene without questions. But she had severely underestimated the man who had managed the Montgomery estate for the past five years with cold, surgical precision.
Victoria: You know how emotional she gets during this pregnancy, Marcus! She threw the vase at my head!
Marcus: Shut your mouth, Victoria. Just shut your mouth right now.
Victoria: How can you speak to me like that when I was almost killed in your own house?
Marcus: You think you are so clever, don't you? You calculated every single detail except one.
Marcus slowly stood up from the floor, taking great care not to step on Sarah's hands or disturb her position. His jaw was clenched so tightly that the muscles in his neck stood out in stark relief. He slowly lifted his arm and pointed one steady finger directly toward the high ceiling near the grand white pillar above the doorway. Victoria's eyes followed his finger upward, her confident expression instantly melting into a mask of pure, unadulterated terror as she realized what he was pointing at.
Mounted high on the immaculate white plaster wall was a sleek, white dome security camera. A small, bright red light was blinking continuously in a steady rhythm, indicating that the high-definition recording system was active and uploading live footage directly to the secure cloud server. Marcus had installed the state-of-the-art security system just three weeks prior to protect the house during the legal probate process. The wide-angle lens pointed directly down at the entire lobby, capturing every single angle of the front entrance with crystal-clear visual and audio fidelity.
Marcus: There is a recording, Victoria. Every single second of what you just did was saved in high definition.
Victoria: What... what are you talking about? That camera is just a dummy for the insurance company!
Marcus: It is fully active. It caught you shoving her onto the glass. It caught you ripping your own dress.
The absolute silence that followed his words was absolute and suffocating. The color completely drained from Victoria's face, leaving her looking hollow and defeated within a fraction of a second. The realization that her violent attempt to secure the family inheritance had been completely documented on high-definition video shattered her composure entirely. She stepped backward, her hands dropping from her collar as her fake tears instantly dried up, replaced by the sheer panic of an exposed criminal facing absolute total ruin.