I did not place the cameras because I enjoyed surveillance or because I distrusted technology. I placed them because after my wife died, silence terrified me more than noise ever had. Silence had taken her. Silence filled the rooms she once warmed with laughter, music, and purpose. Silence pressed against the glass walls of the house at night until it felt like the building itself was listening, waiting for something else to disappear. People imagine wealth as insulation against pain, but money does not muffle grief.

It amplifies it. Every empty space grows larger. Every echo lingers longer. When Seraphina died, the house became a museum of unfinished moments—her cello case untouched by the door, sheet music still clipped to the stand, a scarf draped over the back of a chair as if she might return for it at any second. And then there were the twins. Leo and Noah. Two fragile lives breathing beside one another in cribs too large for bodies so small. I loved them, but I did not yet know how to be near them without feeling that I was failing her. Noah slept peacefully.