Lin Yue did not leave the nursery.
She sat in the rocking chair beside Auriel's crib, close enough to reach him if he stirred, close enough to see anyone who came through the door. Her phone was in her hand, the screen glowing with data MS had pulled from the estate systems.
The staff list scrolled past, forty-nine names with positions and years of service and pay rates, but she did not know what she was looking for yet, so she kept scrolling until the names blurred together.
[Focus on the ones with authority,] MS said in her head. [The rat has power here. They would need it to cover their tracks.]
She filtered the list to show only department heads and senior staff, the people with access to accounts and schedules and the parts of the house where regular servants did not go.
