Sabina smiled warmly beside him, offering a serene and elegant expression as she gently took his hand beneath the dining table like a devoted partner.
Rosamund stood quietly near the kitchen entrance, clearing dishes off the side counter with an entirely unreadable expression on her face.
The following morning, the private chauffeur loaded Chadworth’s luggage into the trunk of the car.
His two little girls hugged him tightly at the front entrance before he stepped outside.
“I love you so much, Daddy,” Gemma whispered into his coat.
He kissed both of their foreheads, forced a confident smile, and stepped into the back seat of the vehicle.
As the heavy car rolled down the long driveway, he glanced back through the dark tinted glass one last time.
His daughters stood together on the front steps, watching the car disappear past the iron gates.
Behind them, inside the foyer, Rosamund held a morning tray and respectfully lowered her gaze the moment she noticed him looking back.
It looked like the picture of an ordinary, peaceful goodbye.
It looked like a busy father leaving for work while his household settled back into its comfortable daily routine.
However, everything had been carefully arranged in advance.
Thirty minutes later, Chadworth was back inside his own home, stepping through a discrete service door near the laundry facility while the rest of the household staff believed he was sitting in traffic on his way to the airfield.
Moving without a sound, he followed his security chief, Barnaby, down a narrow corridor toward a locked control room that was rarely opened except during annual routine maintenance checks.
Inside the compact room, a massive wall of digital surveillance monitors illuminated the dark space with a cool blue glow.
The screens displayed crystal-clear feeds of the primary kitchen, the grand foyer, the formal parlor, the second-floor hallway, the rear garden, the play area, and the breakfast nook.
Every single corner of the sprawling estate he had built was visible on those high-definition screens.
“All camera feeds and directional microphones are fully active, sir,” Barnaby reported quietly as he adjusted the master control panel.
Chadworth took a seat in the central leather chair and stared intently at the monitors.
“I want to see exactly how people behave in this house when they truly believe I am thousands of miles away,” he instructed.
At first, nothing out of the ordinary occurred on any of the screens.
