Chapter 44
Forty-Four
Ellie
The laptop is exactly where I found it last time—hidden inside a small black safe on the bookshelf. If I didn’t already know
to look for it, I’d have missed it again.
But I know Jack now.
I know where he hides the truth.
I carry the laptop to the dining table, fingers trembling as I plug it in. The screen flickers to life. The desktop is bare,
sterile. A single folder sits in the corner labeled simply: ARCHIVE.
I open it.
Inside are dozens of subfolders—each labeled with dates, timestamps, and generic location titles: Living Room Cam, Kitchen Feed, Bedroom 2.
I click on one marked 03–16_Kitchen_2AM.
The video loads slowly, and then I see it: my kitchen, dark and quiet. I’m there, barely visible in the corner of the frame,
curled on the couch, motionless. Sound asleep.
The camera doesn’t move. But Jack does.
He walks into frame at 2:17 a.m., barefoot, in a T-shirt and pajama pants. He moves with purpose—turns each burner on one by one.
He opens the cabinet, takes something out. A rag. He dips it in a bottle of alcohol and leaves it precariously near the flame.
I watch, horrified, as he stands for a moment, gazing at the flickering gas blue beneath the pan like he’s admiring a painting.
Then he walks over to the couch—to me—and gently lifts my head to place a pillow beneath it.
He brushes the hair from my face. Soft. Loving. A performance.
Then he walks out of frame.
Ten minutes later, the fire starts.
I slam the laptop shut so hard the click echoes through the room.
My heart pounds, not from fear—but from rage.
He did it. He set the fire. While I slept.
He wanted the chaos, the smoke, the confusion. He wanted me to wake up shaking, afraid of my own hands, convinced that I’d
nearly burned down our home.
It worked.
I cried in his arms. I believed him when he said I needed help. I swallowed the pills he gave me. Just to help you sleep, sweetheart. You’re not yourself.
I was myself. I was the only real thing in the whole damn apartment. Jack just drugged that version of me into silence. Because
he needed a sweet, simpering wife at home.
He wanted the best of both worlds. Me: the pristine wife. Aubrey: the uninhibited escape.
And all the power and profit of my father’s empire, untouched by suspicion. He’s a master of compartmentalization. Every part
of his life in its place.
Until now.
Until me.
I pace the kitchen—our kitchen—and suddenly the space feels unfamiliar. Cold. This was never my home. It was a stage set.
A carefully curated illusion where I played the role he cast me in.
But I’ve read the script now.
And I’m rewriting the ending.
I return to the laptop, open the folder again. I watch him do it three more times—small manipulations caught on silent, grainy
video. Planting the gun in the sink. Drugging my orange juice before bringing me breakfast in bed. Deleting files from my
phone while I sleep. All while telling me that I’m just “overwhelmed.”
Every time I doubted myself, Jack was there to confirm that I should. Every time I questioned him, he said I was tired, hormonal,
or unstable.
No. I wasn’t broken. I was being broken.
On purpose.
And now that I see it, I can’t unsee it. I grab a legal pad from the drawer and begin to write. Not notes—a plan. Not just
to leave. Not just to survive. To ruin him.
I have the footage. I have the financial contracts. I have the bank account numbers he never thought I’d find. And now, I
have something more powerful than all of that: clarity.
A manipulator. A fraud. Maybe even evil. But I see it now—I see him clearly. And I see myself clearly, too. Not the victim
he wanted me to become. Not the wife who smiles through betrayal. Not the woman who doubts her own mind.
I hold every key to destroy him.
All I have to do is turn the lock.
I sit down, take a breath, and press record on my phone. My voice is calm, steady.
“This is my statement,” I begin. “My name is Elyse Valentinja Taylor, and if you’re hearing this, I’ve already exposed Jack
Taylor, alias Julian McCallister, and the crimes he’s committed.”
I smile as the red recording light blinks. Because now, I’m not just surviving his story.
I’m writing my own. And this time—he’s the one who won’t see it coming.
The phone buzzes against the table.
My hands are still shaking from watching Jack set the fire, drugging me over the weeks and months, planting the gun in the
sink—watching him tuck me in before lighting the burner, as if that somehow absolved him. I glance at the screen, expecting another meaningless notification.
Instead, it’s a message from an unknown number.
We finish this, together. Like mother, like daughter . . .
I stare at the text, reading it once, then twice more. The room shifts around me. Not with fear. With clarity. She knows.
She’s watching, too. Not just Jack. My mother.
The woman I thought had died in a psychiatric hospital when I was ten. The woman I thought had been broken by my father, locked
away and left to rot. But now I know the truth—she didn’t die. She disappeared. And she’s been waiting.
My mind scrambles to find comfort in the words. Together sounds good. Mother sounds like salvation.
But I don’t trust that voice anymore.
My mother didn’t send this message because she wants to save me. She sent it because she sees herself in me—because we’re two sides of the same blade. And I don’t know which one of us is sharper.
I grip the edge of the table to steady myself. The message is a warning disguised as comfort.
I can’t trust her. I can’t trust either of them.
I turn back to the laptop. The grainy image of the kitchen burner hissing to life stares back at me. Jack’s figure moves like
a shadow on a stage. He’s a monster in plain sight now.
I click through the folder, reopen the surveillance system. Live feeds begin to flicker to life across the screen—bedroom,
hallway, balcony. Cameras he installed under the guise of protecting me, securing our home. They’ve been watching me all along.
Well, now I’m watching him. I click a few keys and activate the mirroring program I found via a quick internet search. Every feed is now streaming to
the encrypted drive I control. Not Jack. Not my mother. Me.
Then I open the dummy email I created under an alias—L.Grey_Archive—and attach the fire and other incriminating footage and
a few select financial documents. I type one sentence into the draft subject line: This is just the beginning.
Then I save it to drafts. Not sent. Not yet. A loaded weapon waiting for the right time to pull the trigger. I sit back in
the chair and breathe slowly. The plan is already in motion.
Jack thinks I’m broken. My mother thinks I’m hers. My father thinks I’m irrelevant.
They’re all wrong.