Chapter 5 - THE EYE INSIDE THE RABBIT
Victor removed the stuffed rabbit with gloved hands.
Ellie woke when he lifted it from the bed.
“My Bunny.”
“I need to fix Bunny for you.”
“No.”
Her lower lip trembled.
I sat beside her and pulled her into my arms.
“Bunny has a little boo-boo.”
She looked at Victor suspiciously.
“Uncle Vic break it?”
Victor’s face softened despite everything.
“Uncle Vic is going to make it better.”
Ellie accepted that with the solemnity of a judge.
Victor carried the toy into the living room.
He used a small multitool to open a seam near the plastic eye.
Inside was a miniature camera, a battery, and a cellular transmitter.
Nina stared at it.
“How long could that have been there?”
Victor examined the battery label.
“Days, maybe weeks.”
I remembered buying the rabbit at an airport gift shop almost a year earlier.
Ellie slept with it every night.
“Could Grant have installed it?”
“Yes.”
“Could Celeste?”
“Yes.”
“Could someone be watching us right now?”
Victor disconnected the battery.
“Not through this.”
The thought that someone had watched Ellie sleep made something fierce and silent settle inside me.
Grant could humiliate me.
He could steal money.
He could lie about my mental health.
But invading our daughter’s bedroom crossed into a kind of coldness I could no longer explain away as greed.
Nina bagged the device.
“We take this to a private forensic lab tonight.”
Victor nodded.
“Not Kingsley’s lab.”
“Why not?”
“Because if Bluebird has been compromised, I do not know who inside Kingsley is clean.”
I looked at him.
“That includes you.”
He met my eyes.
“Yes.”
The answer hurt because it was the correct answer.
I had spent my life inside an empire built on systems of trust.
Now every system had become a possible doorway.
At midnight, we moved again.
Not because we wanted to hide from the court, but because the hotel could no longer guarantee that our room had not been compromised.
Nina notified Grant’s counsel of the new location through the emergency court channel.
Victor chose a small residential inn near the courthouse.
No luxury.
No corporate account.
No Kingsley signage.
I slept for forty minutes.
I did not sleep immediately after the rabbit was opened.
Victor searched the hotel suite three times.
The first search found nothing else.
The second found a tiny adhesive mark behind the television.
The third found a second transmitter attached beneath the dining table.
It was not a camera.
It was a Bluetooth beacon used to identify nearby devices.
Victor explained that anyone monitoring the beacon could learn when specific phones entered or left the room.
“So they did not only want to watch us.”
“They wanted to know who came to see you.”
Nina looked at her own phone.
“That means my device may now be tagged.”
Victor nodded.
“So is mine.”
We powered down everything nonessential and switched to clean devices from sealed inventory.
The procedure made me feel as if I had wandered into somebody else’s spy story.
Then I remembered the prescription bottle under Ellie’s furniture.
This was not somebody else’s story.
It was mine.
Nina sat across from me at the small dining table.
“You need to decide what you want tomorrow.”
“I want the judge to throw Grant’s petition out.”
“That may not happen.”
“Then I want Ellie with me.”
“That is the legal objective.”
“What is the other objective?”
“Credibility.”
I hated the word.
It sounded like my motherhood had become a presentation.
Nina read my expression.
“I know.”
“No, you do not.”
“You are right.”
She corrected herself without defensiveness.
“I know the legal system will ask you to behave calmly while showing you things that would make any mother furious.”
“That is unfair.”
“Yes.”
“But it is still true.”
I looked toward the bedroom where Ellie slept.
“What if calm starts looking like I do not care?”
“Then I will make sure the record shows why you are calm.”
“What if anger looks unstable?”
“Then I will make sure the record shows what caused it.”
“What if none of that matters because Grant has more evidence I have not seen?”
Nina did not lie to me.
“Then we meet it when it appears.”
That was the first night I understood how exhausting a manufactured case could be.
You do not only defend against lies.
You defend against the anticipation of the next lie.
Every silence becomes a corridor where something worse might be waiting.
I finally lay down beside Ellie just before dawn.
I kept one hand on her back.
Her breathing stayed slow and even.
Mine did not.
At 5:30 a.m., Nina woke me.
“The lab has preliminary results on the camera.”
I sat up immediately.
“What did they find?”
“The device uploaded to a private server.”
“Whose?”
“They cannot identify the owner yet.”
“But?”
“The server also received data from other cameras.”
My skin prickled.
“What other cameras?”
“Your house.”
I stared at her.
“Where?”
“Kitchen, garage, home office, nursery hallway, and your bedroom.”
I felt exposed in a way clothing could not fix.
“Grant watched me.”
“Someone did.”
“For how long?”
“Months.”
I got out of bed.
The custody hearing was scheduled for 8:30 a.m.
By 7:45, I was dressed in a navy suit and sitting in a courthouse conference room while Ellie colored beside a court-appointed child specialist.
Grant arrived at 8:02.
He wore charcoal gray and carried a leather folder.
His lawyer, Samuel Breck, walked beside him.
Celeste was nowhere in sight.
Grant saw me and made a face that looked almost concerned.
“You look tired.”
I did not answer.
He crouched in front of Ellie.
“Hey, princess.”
Ellie looked up.
“Daddy.”
She smiled.
The sight nearly broke me.
Children do not understand betrayal schedules.
They love people on instinct.
Grant opened his arms.
Ellie started toward him.
The child specialist gently touched her shoulder.
“Let’s wait until the judge says it’s okay.”
Grant’s smile disappeared for half a second.
Then he looked at me.
“You are doing this.”
“No.”
“You are keeping her from me.”
“No.”
“You always need control.”
Nina stepped between us.
“Save it for the hearing.”
Inside the courtroom, Grant became someone else.
He was measured.
Sad.
Reluctant.
He told Judge Marr he loved me.
He said he had delayed filing because he hoped I would accept help.
He said I had become unpredictable after my father’s death.
He said I used company security to monitor him.
He said I had begun accusing people of conspiracies.
He said he feared I would take Ellie and disappear.
Every lie contained a grain of something real.
That made them more dangerous.
Yes, I had grieved my father.
Yes, Kingsley security protected us.
Yes, I now believed there was a conspiracy.
Because there was one.
Grant’s lawyer submitted the pill bottle.
He submitted Tessa Boone’s affidavit.
He submitted Dr. Elaine Porter’s letter.
Then he submitted something I had not seen before.
A video.
The screen showed me in my bedroom three months earlier.
I was crying.
I remembered the night.
It had been my father’s birthday.
I had found one of his old voicemails and listened to it repeatedly until I could not breathe.
In the video, I sat on the floor and said, “I cannot do this anymore.”
The clip ended.
Grant looked down as if ashamed to show it.
The courtroom was silent.
I whispered to Nina.
“That was recorded in our bedroom.”
“I know.”
“He cut the rest.”
“What was the rest?”
“I said I could not do another memorial dinner with the board pretending Dad’s death did not hurt.”
Nina stood.
“Your Honor, we object to the context and the method by which this recording was obtained.”
Judge Marr looked at Samuel Breck.
“Source?”
Breck glanced at Grant.
“A home security recording.”
I nearly laughed at the lie.
We had no official camera in our bedroom.
Nina smiled without warmth.
“Excellent.”
She connected her laptop to the courtroom screen.
She showed the judge the hidden camera from Ellie’s rabbit.
Then she showed the forensic lab’s preliminary report linking it to a private surveillance server.
Then she showed the hallway footage of Celeste entering the nursery.
Then Grant’s text.
NOW LET’S SEE WHO THE COURT BELIEVES.
The judge’s expression changed.
Grant leaned toward his lawyer.
They whispered rapidly.
Nina continued.
“We also request immediate preservation of all surveillance devices in the marital residence and all cloud accounts associated with Mr. Mercer.”
Samuel Breck stood.
“This is theatrical.”
Judge Marr looked at him.
“No, Mr. Breck.”
His voice was sharp.
“This is concerning.”
For the first time that morning, Grant lost control of his face.
The judge ordered forensic preservation.
He denied Grant’s request for sole temporary custody.
But he did not dismiss the case.
Instead, he ordered shared temporary access under supervision until the allegations could be examined.
I wanted to protest.
Nina squeezed my wrist beneath the table.
Do not react.
The judge scheduled a full evidentiary hearing in ten days.
Ten days sounded like mercy until I remembered what Grant had accomplished in eleven.
Outside the courtroom, reporters were waiting.
I stopped walking.
“How did they know?”
Nina’s face hardened.
“Someone tipped them.”
Cameras turned toward us.
A reporter shouted.
“Mrs. Mercer, did child services find controlled medication in your daughter’s bedroom?”
Another called out.
“Is Kingsley Holdings paying private security to keep a father from his child?”
I kept walking.
Grant emerged behind me.
He stopped for the cameras.
Of course he did.
“I only want what is safest for my daughter.”
His voice carried perfectly.
“I hope Mara gets the support she needs.”
I did not turn around.
Then Ellie, holding my hand, tugged hard enough to stop me.
“Mommy.”
I crouched.
“What is it?”
She looked past me toward Grant.
Her small face was worried.
“Daddy say I get new mommy soon.”
Everything inside me went silent.
I looked at Grant.
He had heard her.
So had the nearest reporter.
Grant’s smile vanished.
May you like
Ellie continued in the clear voice of a child who had no idea what she was revealing.
“Daddy say when you go sleep for long time, Cece be my mommy.”
