Chapter 11 - The Traitor Within
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The atmosphere inside the Vance estate grew thick with suspicion over the next three days. With Victoria residing at her father's nearby villa under house arrest, Marcus doubled the security guards on the grounds, replacing the outer patrol team with independent contractors.
Yet, despite the heightened security, small, disturbing things kept happening.
A bottle of Leo’s specialized infant formula was found unsealed in the kitchen pantry. A security camera covering the rear courtyard experienced strange signal blackouts every night at precisely two in the morning.
Elena sat in the security monitoring room alongside David, studying the digital logs on the computer screen.
"Look here, David," Elena pointed her finger at the screen. "Every time the courtyard camera goes black, the manual override code is entered from the internal kitchen terminal."
David frowned, zooming in on the access log timestamps. "Only three people have the password for the kitchen terminal: myself, Marcus, and Arthur, the senior butler."
Elena froze. Arthur had been the head butler of the Vance estate for over twelve years. He was a quiet, distinguished man who had served Marcus’s father before him.
"Arthur wouldn't..." Elena whispered in disbelief.
"Let's verify it," David said grimly, pulling up the hidden pinhole camera feed installed above the kitchen pantry door.
They fast-forwarded the video to 1:58 AM from the previous night. On the high-definition screen, a figure wearing a butler’s uniform walked quietly into the kitchen, typed a code into the wall terminal, and then pulled a tiny silver drive from his pocket, plugging it into the security server.
It was Arthur.
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Elena gasped, covering her mouth. "He's downloading the estate’s daily security patrol schedules!"
"He's feeding information to Julian Carter," David growled, standing up from his chair. "I’m calling Marcus right now."
