The Drugged Room

Chapter 4 The Hidden Camera

We returned to The Astoria without speaking. Julian's security team, two men in dark suits, removed the hotel staff and cleared the hall outside Suite 3501. The manager's hand shook so badly that he missed the electronic lock once before the keycard worked.

The room had not been cleaned. The bed was still rumpled, silk restraints hung from all four corners, and the candle's vanilla scent had settled into the carpet. I stopped just inside the door while the manager stared at the floor.

Then I made myself look past the bed.

My father had taught me to sweep a room when I was a teenager, long before I understood why he worried. “Trust no one, Evelyn. The prettiest rooms hide the ugliest secrets.”

I checked the smoke detector, the lamps, and the base of the television. Nothing. The air-conditioning vent near the ceiling sat almost flush with the patterned wallpaper.

“A ladder.”

One of the men returned within a minute with a folding stepladder and a small tool kit. I climbed up and removed the grille with his screwdriver. Deep inside the duct sat a high-fidelity spy camera, its pinprick red light still blinking.

Back at Julian's penthouse, I slid the micro-SD card into his laptop. He stood behind my chair while the first file loaded.

Lily appeared first, handing a thick wad of cash to a nervous hotel waiter. The next clip showed me unconscious on the bed while she directed him to arrange my arms and legs against the silk ties. When he stepped away, she adjusted the lingerie herself. I gripped the desk until the clip ended.

“There's more,” Julian said.

I moved back through the timeline. One timestamp came from hours before they brought me to the room.

Lily and Arthur were together on that same bed. The angle caught both faces, and the room number was embedded in the recording. I checked both details before letting myself look away.

I wanted to shut the laptop. Instead, I let the file run. Afterward, they stayed in bed and talked beneath the camera.

“Is the drug Martha got strong enough?” Arthur asked. “Evelyn has a higher tolerance than most.”

Lily laughed. “Don't worry. Mom made sure it was a special blend. She'll be completely out of it. By the time she wakes up, the whole world will think she's insane. We'll have her locked away in Blackwood, and her precious fortune will be ours to play with.”

I paused the video after Lily's last sentence and copied the entire file, including its timestamps, to a secure drive. My hand shook once when I removed it from the laptop.

The video tied Arthur and Lily to the room and the drug. To stop Martha's guardianship claim, I still needed the pharmacy receipts and the medical records she had spent years building.

Martha kept private papers in her study. She and Lily were supposed to spend the afternoon choosing a blood diamond for the new engagement.

I put the secure drive in my bag and asked for the car.