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They look happy and sweet together. Precious morning moments captured in time. It makes you want to root for the two of them.
“Interesting but not useful.” Lochlan sounds disappointed.
“Are you sure? This could be what Jeffery was using as blackmail. Maybe Marcella bought these off him, but he has more.” I find myself eager to produce something worthwhile.
He shakes his head. “He had covert surveillance cameras. These photos are too intimate, keepsakes taken for themselves.” I sigh. He’s right.
We go back to searching. I take the bedroom bookshelf while Lochlan moves on to another room. I pull out and flip through each book. Half of them are simply for display, bound in foiled leather but filled with only gibberish. There are a few in Serbian, and most look like autobiographies or memoirs with stoic headshots of tough-looking men in suits or military uniforms on the cover.
Pictures frames of the “happy” couple are sprinkled in with the books. I inspect each one, taking the back off and looking inside. When I try taking the back off another, it doesn’t budge. In fact, instead of a removable back, it’s screwed on. Instantly suspicious, I flip it over to try to determine how the photograph got in the frame in the first place.
“Loch, I think I found something!” I holler and immediately hear his footsteps running.
“Whatcha got?”
“So, I can’t take the back off and look at this.” I point to a small hole in the silver trim. “I think it’s a camera, but didn’t Marcella say there are only cameras on the exterior?”
“She must not know about this one,” he says but doesn’t sound convinced. My chest pounds in beat with the sinking feeling in my gut. Could this be some sort of setup? She said they didn’t have anything inside, and she was supposed to temporarily disable the ones outside.
What if they’ve been watching this the whole time?
“Finn built this app,” he explains as he takes the frame slash camera from my hands and sits on the foot of the bed. “It allows you to hack into the feed of anything close to you that is transmitting a live signal.”
I stand above him, watching his fingers swipe and tap over his screen. “That seems incredibly illegal.”
“Of course, it is.” He looks up at me, eyebrows knitted together, perplexed why I’d say such a thing, then shakes his head. “Anyway, I think this is why he hasn’t told Marcella about it.” He turns the phone around so I can see. “It seems he only records certain things.”
On the screen, we watch Marcella and Ilya come home from the masquerade. The time stamp puts it half an hour before Clark recalls seeing his brother for the last time. Ilya quickly strips down to his undershirt and boxers, sliding under the covers, while Marcella disappears out of frame toward the en suite bathroom. Lochlan fast forwards until we see her come back in a slip nightgown and climb into the same bed we’re sitting on.
I feel uncomfortable watching this private moment, but I also can’t look away. There’s something unsettling about the contrast between knowing someone is a brutal murderer and then seeing them in their underwear that is inexplicably fascinating.
Marcella turns off her bedside lamp and curls away from her husband. He reaches over and pulls the blankets off her shoulder. The audio is faint, but I can hear her say, “I’m not in the mood, Ilya.”
That doesn’t stop him from rolling her onto her back. “Please, I’m tired.” My stomach knots as he climbs on top of her anyway. She tries to push him off, but he grabs her wrists with surprising agility. I feel frozen, my heart pounding in my throat.
“I paid for a wife, not a nun. Now make it worth my money.” His voice is rough and scratchy as he uses his hold on her wrists to throw her to the side. She catches herself on her hands and knees by the edge of the bed. I feel sick as he shoves his boxers down and grabs her hips. He pushes her cheek to the pillow and her face points toward the hidden camera.
It feels like she’s looking right at us. The brokenness in her eyes cuts like sharp glass. “Turn it off.” I tear my gaze away, shaking and sickened. I feel horrible for witnessing such a vile act, watching her being debased, knowing it’s not the first time and won’t be the last. The oxygen is sucked out from my lungs as I imagine what she would feel if she knew this was all recorded, if she knew we’d seen it.
When I look back at Lochlan, he’s still watching the feed and ire strikes me like a bolt of lightning. “I said turn it the fuck off!” I snatch his phone out of his hands and throw it across the room.
“Stella.” He calmly rises.
“That’s fucking rape, Lochlan, and you—you’re just watching it like it’s a goddamn Netflix show.” My pulse hammers erratically as anger burns deep in my veins.
“I know what it is.” His voice is stern with an edge of offense. “And I get no pleasure watching it, but I need to finish—”
“Why? Why?” I am at a frustrating loss for words as the pressure of the last few days comes crashing down on me. The blood-soaked clothes, the frozen and mutilated body. The black holes in my memory and the horror of not knowing what else may have happened that I can’t remember.
“I’m going to fast forward to the end. I need to make sure that Ilya leaves and comes back like we think. If not, he has an alibi for the entire murder window.” He waits until I nod in understanding to go fetch his phone. Hopefully, the plush carpet kept it from getting damaged.
“Right, yeah. That makes sense. Is your phone okay?” I wince.
He sets it on the bed without even checking and pulls me to him. “Are you okay?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. My tongue is tied as emotion chokes me. I shake my head. No, I’m not okay.
He doesn’t hesitate. He folds his arms around me and holds me close. His heart beats against mine as I gulp down air. He rests his cheek on the top of my head and softly murmurs, “What can I do to make you feel safe?”
