Chapter 7 - The Hidden Eyes Inside My Sanctuary
Paranoia is a slow acting poison that completely rewires your brain. Over the next two weeks, my beautiful sanctuary transformed into a terrifying prison. I started noticing impossible, maddening details. A vase of fresh lilies on the dining table shifted exactly three inches to the left. The settings on my private bathroom shower were adjusted to a scalding temperature I never used. The delicate clasps on my jewelry box were left unlatched. David tried to reassure me, suggesting that our new cleaning service might be careless, but I knew the truth. Someone was coming inside my home when we were gone. Someone wanted me to know they had complete access to my most intimate spaces.
I fired the cleaning staff. I changed all the biometric locks. I even hired a private security firm to sweep the property, but they found absolutely nothing. Bradley was playing a psychological game designed to make me look completely unhinged to the people around me, exactly the way his mother Barbara used to do. But I was not going to let history repeat itself. I needed proof. I needed a weapon.
I reached out to a contact I had made during my corporate consulting years. His name was Elias, a former intelligence officer who now specialized in corporate espionage and counter surveillance for the absolute elite. I paid him a staggering retainer fee in cash, demanding absolute discretion. Elias arrived at my home under the guise of an internet technician, carrying bags of highly restricted scanning equipment.
David and I sat on the living room sofa, watching Elias sweep the living room with a device that looked like it belonged in a military bunker. For three hours, the house was completely silent except for the low hum of the scanner. Then, Elias stopped in the center of the master bedroom. He pointed the wand toward the massive, ornate air conditioning vent located directly above our bed. The machine emitted a sharp, piercing whine.
"You have uninvited guests," Elias said, his voice completely devoid of emotion.
He climbed a step ladder, unscrewed the metal grating, and carefully extracted a device no larger than a coin. It was a military grade, high definition camera with a built in audio transmitter. Elias systematically dismantled the rest of the house and found four more devices. One in my home office aimed directly at my computer keyboard. One in the kitchen. One in the guest bathroom. And one completely hidden inside the frame of the living room television.
I felt violently ill. The absolute violation of my privacy, the thought of Bradley sitting in some dark room watching me sleep, watching me live, made me want to scream until my lungs gave out. David looked at the small black devices lined up on our kitchen counter, his hands gripping the marble edge so hard his knuckles turned completely white.
"Can you trace where the signal is going?" I asked Elias, my voice trembling with a mixture of absolute disgust and boiling rage.
Elias connected one of the transmitters to his encrypted laptop. His fingers flew across the keyboard, running tracing algorithms that bounced across global servers. "These are not cheap retail cameras," Elias explained, his eyes fixed on the scrolling green code. "These use a proprietary encryption key. The data is being bounced through servers in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands before landing right here in the city. Whoever is funding this has extremely deep pockets."
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The code finally stopped scrolling, revealing an IP address and a physical location. Elias tapped the screen. "The feed is going to a private server located inside the executive suite of Vance Logistics."
The name hit me like a physical blow to the stomach. Vance Logistics was the massive, multi billion dollar shipping conglomerate that had fired Bradley after the pool video went viral. Arthur Vance, the ruthless CEO, was notoriously protective of his corporate image. Why in the world would a billionaire CEO be funding the revenge campaign of a disgraced former employee? The answer was terrifying, but it gave me exactly what I needed. A target.
