CHAPTER 6 – THE STAFF SPEAKS
The first truth came haltingly.
Marta said Lily had been made to eat alone in the breakfast room if she “spoke out of turn.” A guard admitted Celeste ordered staff not to let Lily enter Julian’s study or touch his phone line without permission. The younger staff member confessed he had seen Lily crying in the laundry hall after Celeste accused her of being ungrateful.
No one described graphic violence.
No one needed to.
Control had a pattern.
Julian listened without interrupting. His face remained still, but the stillness cost him. Lily stood beside him in his oversized suit jacket, her small hand wrapped around two of his fingers.
Celeste’s glass trembled slightly in her hand.
“This is hysteria,” she said. “Employees protecting their jobs by turning on me.”
Julian looked at the guards. “Check the house cameras.”
Celeste’s expression changed.
Briefly.
But enough.
The mansion had cameras in public rooms: foyer, hallways, entrances. Julian had installed them after a break-in scare years earlier. Celeste knew about them, but she also knew where they did not reach. She had been careful.
Not careful enough.
Footage would show Lily scrubbing the foyer. Celeste supervising. Staff standing by. The gray dress. The cloth. The humiliation. Perhaps not every bruise, but the scene itself was undeniable.
Julian picked up his briefcase and handed it to his chief of security.
“Call my attorney. Call Mrs. Hayes. Call Dr. Patel to examine Lily privately with me present only if she wants me there. And no one leaves until statements are taken.”
Celeste laughed once, brittle. “Statements? Julian, you’re being absurd.”
He turned toward her at last.
“Absurd was thinking I would thank you for breaking my child’s spirit and calling it discipline.”
The words landed with more force than shouting.
Celeste tried to step closer.
Lily shrank behind Julian.
He saw it.
So did everyone.
Celeste stopped.
May you like
Her power had been built on rooms where Lily had no one to stand behind.
Now Lily did.
