I caught my mother holding our crying newborn hostage.<\/p>\n
My wife \u2014 still recovering from a near-fatal postpartum hemorrhage \u2014 wept on the floor while my mother stood over her, the smashed pain meds scattered in the water.<\/p>\n
“Clean up this glass on your hands and knees. Only then can you hold him,” my mother hissed.<\/p>\n
Online, she played the perfect grandmother.<\/p>\n
She had no idea I was parked three blocks away, watching the hidden camera, about to end her place in our lives for good.<\/p>\n
My name is Travis Calder. For the past decade I’ve made my living as Director of Operations for a major logistics firm here in Phoenix.<\/p>\n
My whole professional existence rests on one idea: anticipating disaster.<\/p>\n
I map supply chains, find the weak links in distribution networks, and build contingency plans for when the unexpected happens \u2014 because it always does.<\/p>\n
I deal in cold facts. I don’t leave things to chance, and I never imagined I’d be blind to a catastrophic failure inside my own home.<\/p>\n
But the most dangerous sabotage never comes from outside. It comes from the people who hold the keys to your front door.<\/p>\n
My wife, Brooke, is the center of my gravity.<\/p>\n
Where I’m rigid and analytical, she’s warmth and intuition \u2014 the kind of woman who remembers the names of the grocery cashiers’ kids, who rescues stray animals, who can make a sterile modern house feel like a sanctuary just by being in it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When we found out we were expecting a son, we named him Jonah, and I felt an overwhelming sense of completion.<\/p>\n
I mapped out the nursery, child-proofed the cabinets six months early, researched every pediatrician in a thirty-mile radius. I thought I’d controlled every variable.<\/p>\n
I was wrong. The delivery was a nightmare. What should have been a routine procedure became a chaotic emergency within minutes.<\/p>\n
Brooke suffered a severe hemorrhage.<\/p>\n
I stood frozen in the corner of that blinding white room, the smell of iodine and panic burning my nose, watching a team fight to keep my wife from slipping away.<\/p>\n
She survived, thank God. But the Brooke who came home a week later was a shadow \u2014 pale, physically fragile, hollowed out by the trauma.<\/p>\n
Her doctor was adamant: strict bed rest, nothing heavier than the baby, no chores, no stress.<\/p>\n
Her stitches were extensive and her blood levels dangerously low.<\/p>\n
Enter my mother, Lorraine Calder.<\/p>\n
When she offered to fly in from Chicago for a month, it felt like a godsend.<\/p>\n
Lorraine was a woman of impeccable standards \u2014 president of her local Rotary club, never a hair out of place, radiating an aura of absolute maternal competence. To the outside world, she was the perfect matriarch.<\/p>\n
When she arrived, her social media flooded with curated pictures: Lorraine in a spotless pastel cardigan, cradling a sleeping Jonah in the sunlight.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My heart is full. Serving my beautiful daughter-in-law and my perfect grandson. Family is everything.<\/em><\/p>\n The comments rolled in by the hundreds, praising her devotion.<\/p>\n Almost immediately, a chilling dissonance began to hum through the house.<\/p>\n It started with the meals. Lorraine insisted on cooking every night, waving me out of the kitchen with a benevolent smile.<\/p>\n Then she’d serve heavy, acidic dishes \u2014 spicy chili, tomato casseroles \u2014 knowing full well that Brooke’s severe postpartum reflux made keeping anything down an ordeal.<\/p>\n When I pointed it out, my mother would gasp with theatrical realization.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Oh, Travis, I completely forgot! I’m just so exhausted from cleaning up around here. Brooke, sweetheart, I’m sorry. You’ll have to make do with dry toast tonight. I’ll do better tomorrow.”<\/p>\n Brooke, ever the peacemaker, would smile weakly through the pain and say it was fine.<\/p>\n But I caught the way my mother looked at her when Brooke’s back was turned \u2014 cold, calculating disdain.<\/p>\n Then there was the nursery camera. I’d installed a good monitor, linked to an app on my phone, so I could check on them from the office.<\/p>\n In the second week, the camera started dropping offline \u2014 always between nine and noon, right after I left for work.<\/p>\n “The Wi-Fi in this house is dreadful, dear,” Lorraine would say smoothly when I called. “Or maybe I bumped the plug while vacuuming. You know how clumsy I get trying to keep this place from falling apart.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I accepted it the first time. The second time, my logistical brain started to itch.<\/p>\n The router was brand new. The plug was hidden behind a heavy dresser.<\/p>\n By the third time, I noticed something else: when I got home, Brooke was more withdrawn each day, her eyes red-rimmed, her hands trembling. Whenever Lorraine entered the room, Brooke flinched.<\/p>\n Something is wrong,<\/em> a voice in my head said. The math isn’t adding up.<\/em><\/p>\n I stopped guessing. I decided to gather data.<\/p>\n I bought a second camera \u2014 a tiny battery-operated device disguised as a digital clock, completely independent of the house Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The night before, I set it on the nursery bookshelf, angling the lens to capture the bassinet and the nursing chair.<\/p>\n The next morning I kissed Brooke’s forehead, grabbed my briefcase, and told my mother I had an all-day strategy meeting.<\/p>\n I walked out the front door, got in my car, and drove exactly three blocks before pulling into a deserted parking lot.<\/p>\n I killed the engine, opened the hidden camera’s feed on my iPad, and waited.<\/p>\n I didn’t know what I was looking for. The cold knot in my stomach said I was about to find it.<\/p>\n For the first hour, everything was quiet. Brooke slept in the oversized glider, her head against the side, exhausted.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jonah slept in his bassinet. Soft morning light. Peace.<\/p>\n At 9:15, my phone buzzed. A notification from the primary security app: Camera Offline.<\/em><\/p>\n My breath caught. On the hidden feed, the nursery door opened.<\/p>\n My mother walked in \u2014 not wearing the grandmotherly smile plastered across her Facebook, but a hard, cruel line of a face.<\/p>\n She went straight to the wall-mounted camera, reached up, and deliberately pulled the power cord from the back.<\/p>\n It wasn’t the Wi-Fi. It was never the Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I gripped the wheel, my knuckles white, and watched Lorraine turn from the dead camera to my sleeping wife.<\/p>\n Brooke stirred, opened her eyes, and the instant she saw Lorraine her whole body tensed. She tried to sit up, but a spasm crossed her face and she clutched her lower abdomen where the stitches were.<\/p>\n Lorraine didn’t ask if she was okay. She walked to the side table where Brooke’s water pitcher and pain medication sat.<\/p>\n I turned up the volume, and the two-way audio pulled in the room.<\/p>\n “You’re still sleeping?” Lorraine’s voice crackled through \u2014 not the syrup she used around me, but sharp and venomous. “It’s past nine, Brooke. The day’s half over.”<\/p>\n “I’m sorry, Lorraine,” Brooke whispered, barely audible. “Jonah was up crying from two until five. I just got him down.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Oh, please,” Lorraine scoffed, arms crossed. “Every mother deals with a crying baby. It’s no excuse to let this house turn into a pigsty. The laundry’s overflowing and the counters are sticky.”<\/p>\n “Travis told me not to worry about the chores,” Brooke pleaded, tears welling. “The doctor said\u2014”<\/p>\n “The doctor doesn’t have to live in this filth!” Lorraine snapped, stepping closer. “My son is out there working himself to the bone for you, and you can’t run a load of towels. You’re taking advantage of his kindness. You’re playing the victim.”<\/p>\n I sat in my car, my heart slamming against my ribs.<\/p>\n My mother \u2014 who raised me, who preached kindness and family values at her charity luncheons \u2014 stood over my bleeding wife and tore her apart.<\/p>\n And the worst was still coming.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jonah woke at the pitch of her voice and let out a small wail, his tiny arms thrashing.<\/p>\n Brooke tried to push out of the chair to reach him, leaning forward, wincing, her hand stretching for the bassinet.<\/p>\n Lorraine moved faster. She stepped between Brooke and the crib.<\/p>\n “Let me get him, please,” Brooke begged, her voice cracking.<\/p>\n “No,” Lorraine said flatly.<\/p>\n Then, with a deliberate sweep of her arm, she knocked the water pitcher off the table. It shattered across the hardwood, water spreading fast into the rug, and Brooke’s orange pill bottle clattered after it, popping open, scattering her pain medication into the wet glass.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brooke gasped and shrank back into the chair.<\/p>\n Lorraine looked at the mess, then back at Brooke, with terrifying satisfaction. “Look what you made me do,” she said, mock pity dripping from every word. “So clumsy. So frantic. Just utterly useless.”<\/p>\n Jonah was screaming now. Lorraine reached into the bassinet, scooped him up, and held him against her hip, away from Brooke’s outstretched, trembling hands.<\/p>\n “Give him to me! Please, Lorraine, he needs to eat!” Brooke was hyperventilating, tears streaming down her pale face.<\/p>\n “Jonah’s crying because he can sense his mother is a weak, incompetent mess,” Lorraine hissed, pointing at the shattered glass and the soaked pills.<\/p>\n “You want your child? Get on your hands and knees and clean up this embarrassment of a floor. Only then will I let you hold him.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I stopped breathing. The air in the car felt gone.<\/p>\n I was watching a hostage situation in my own home \u2014 my mother using my newborn son as leverage to torture my wife.<\/p>\n Rage, pure and blinding, went off behind my eyes.<\/p>\n My first instinct was to throw the car into drive, tear back home, kick the door off its hinges, and drag that monster into the street. My hand actually reached for the gearshift.<\/p>\n But the logistics director in me \u2014 the part trained to run a crisis without emotion \u2014 hit the brakes.<\/p>\n Think.<\/em> If I burst in screaming, Lorraine would spin it. She’d say Brooke broke the glass, that Brooke was hysterical, that she was only protecting the baby.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brooke was too weak to fight back, and sudden chaos could put Jonah in danger.<\/p>\n I needed a surgical extraction \u2014 the victims out of the blast radius before I detonated anything. I needed someone on the inside.<\/p>\n I dialed my older sister, Paige, in Scottsdale, twenty minutes away. She answered on the third ring, breezy and distracted. “Hey, Trav. Can’t talk long, I’m at the garden center looking at hydrangeas. What’s up?”<\/p>\n “Paige,” I said, and my voice sounded like it came from the bottom of a well. “Listen to me very carefully.”<\/p>\n She went still. “Travis? What’s wrong? Is it the baby? Is Brooke okay?”<\/p>\n “Brooke is not okay. And it’s because of Mom.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A heavy sigh. The wall went up. “Travis, come on. We’ve been over this. Mom’s just particular. She means well. Brooke’s probably hormonal and sensitive right now. You can’t blame Mom for\u2014”<\/p>\n “Paige, stop talking and look at your phone.”<\/p>\n While she’d been defending her, I’d clipped the last three minutes of the hidden feed \u2014 the shattered glass, the scattered pills, the ultimatum \u2014 and hit send. “I just sent you a video. Watch it. Now. I’ll wait.”<\/p>\n I sat in the silence of my car, listening to the garden center behind her. I heard her tap the screen.<\/p>\n Then the tinny playback of Lorraine’s voice leaked through: …crying because he can sense his mother is a weak, incompetent mess… get on your hands and knees…<\/em><\/p>\n I waited for a gasp, a shout, a question. Instead there was dead, echoing silence. “Paige?”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When she finally spoke, her voice broke into a jagged, wet sob \u2014 not shock, but a decades-old dam giving way.<\/p>\n “She used to do this to me,” she whispered, the words tumbling out. “When I was a teenager. When Dad wasn’t around. She’d break things and make me clean them up while she mocked me. She’d withhold food. She told me I was crazy. She convinced me I made it all up in my head. I thought I was insane.”<\/p>\n My eyes stung. The monster hadn’t been born today. She’d been living in our family for years, hiding behind a pristine reputation.<\/p>\n “You’re not crazy, Paige,” I said. “She’s exactly what you thought she was. But right now Brooke is bleeding and crying in that room and my son is in that woman’s arms. I want to tear the house down, but if I do, it’s a war zone. I need them out safely first.”<\/p>\n Paige sniffled, and then the crying hardened into something like steel.<\/p>\n “Tell me what you need. Exactly what to do.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “I’m calling a locksmith right now,” I said, my logistics brain firing. “You have a key. Drop everything, drive to my house, act completely normal, and get Brooke and Jonah out. Any excuse \u2014 a surprise doctor’s appointment, a postnatal massage. Just get them to your car and drive.”<\/p>\n “What if she tries to stop me?”<\/p>\n “She won’t. Mom cares too much about her image to look like a monster in front of you. She thinks she still has you fooled. Play on that.”<\/p>\n “And what are you going to do?”<\/p>\n On the screen, Brooke was trying to lower herself from the chair, weeping, her hands reaching toward the broken glass while Lorraine stood over her bouncing a screaming Jonah with sadistic triumph.<\/p>\n “I’m going to make sure she never sets foot in our lives again.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I hung up and dialed the emergency line for the commercial locksmith I used for my warehouses, offered him triple his rate to be at my address in fifteen minutes. He agreed.<\/p>\n Then I sat, eyes glued to the screen, watching the seconds crawl. Every sob that shook Brooke felt like a blow to my chest.<\/p>\n I watched her trembling fingers pick pills out of the wet glass while my mother looked on like a queen watching a peasant grovel.<\/p>\n Ten minutes. Twelve. Then, on the audio, the sharp chime of the front doorbell.<\/p>\n Lorraine’s head snapped up. The sneer vanished, instantly replaced by pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n She smoothed her cardigan and walked out of the nursery \u2014 taking my crying son with her.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The trap was set. Now I just had to pray the extraction held.<\/p>\n Brooke was left alone on the floor. She’d gathered the pills, but her hand was bleeding from a sliver of glass.<\/p>\n She stared at the empty doorway where my mother had disappeared with her child, utterly defeated.<\/p>\n Through the hidden mic, the voices drifted up from downstairs.<\/p>\n “Paige! Darling, what a wonderful surprise!” Lorraine’s voice was sickly sweet. “We weren’t expecting you! Come look at your beautiful nephew. He’s just a little fussy today.”<\/p>\n “Hi, Mom.” Paige’s voice was steady, though I could hear the razor tension under it. “He looks perfect. I can’t stay long, though \u2014 I’m here to steal Brooke for a bit.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Steal Brooke?” A fraction of the warmth dropped. “Oh, honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea. She’s very weak today. Very fragile. She hasn’t even gotten dressed. She needs to rest.”<\/p>\n “That’s exactly why I’m here,” Paige countered, her footsteps climbing the stairs, forcing Lorraine to follow. “A friend runs an upscale postnatal spa. Last-minute cancellation, offered it to me free \u2014 they specialize in postpartum recovery. And I’m taking Jonah too. My friend wants to meet him, and it gives you a break, Mom. You’ve been working so hard.”<\/p>\n Brilliant,<\/em> I thought. Play to her ego.<\/em><\/p>\n “Well\u2026” Lorraine hesitated at the nursery door.<\/p>\n Paige pushed past her into the camera’s frame. She took one look at Brooke \u2014 on her knees, hand bleeding, ringed by glass and water \u2014 and I saw her jaw lock so hard I thought it might crack. But she stayed in character.<\/p>\n “Brooke! Oh my goodness, what happened here?” she asked, all fake, oblivious concern.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “I\u2026 I dropped the water,” Brooke stammered, too afraid to look at Lorraine.<\/p>\n “Oh, you clumsy girl,” Lorraine chimed from the doorway, still holding Jonah. “I told her to rest, but she insisted on doing things herself.”<\/p>\n Paige didn’t look at our mother. She knelt, wrapped an arm around Brooke’s waist, and eased her to her feet.<\/p>\n “Don’t worry about the mess, Mom, I’ll clean it later. Brooke’s coming with me. We’ve got an appointment in twenty minutes. Come on, Brooke, I’ve got comfortable clothes for you in the car.”<\/p>\n Brooke looked dazed by the sudden rescue. “But\u2026 Jonah\u2026”<\/p>\n “I’ll take him.” Paige turned to Lorraine, stepped directly into her space, and held out her arms. The air seemed to freeze. For one terrible second I thought Lorraine would tighten her grip and drop the act.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But Paige stared her down with a defiance I’m certain my mother had never seen from her. “Give me the baby, Mom.”<\/p>\n Her voice dropped an octave, carrying a quiet, undeniable warning. Don’t make a scene.<\/em><\/p>\n Lorraine blinked. The social math ran behind her eyes \u2014 to refuse would be strange, possessive, impossible to explain. Slowly, reluctantly, she handed Jonah over.<\/p>\n “Well,” she sniffed, adjusting her cardigan. “If you insist. Keep him warm. And Brooke, really \u2014 try to pull yourself together today.”<\/p>\n “We’ll be fine,” Paige said, and guided Brooke out, Jonah cradled against her chest.<\/p>\n Their footsteps receded down the stairs. The front door opened, then shut with a heavy metallic click.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My phone buzzed. A text from Paige: We’re in the car. We’re safe. Do it.<\/em><\/p>\n A breath I hadn’t known I was holding rushed out. The hostages were clear.<\/p>\n On the iPad, Lorraine stood alone in the nursery, surveying the empty room, her expression sliding from pleasant to annoyed.<\/p>\n She looked at the spilled water and glass, let out a martyr’s sigh, and turned to leave.<\/p>\n It was time. I tapped the microphone icon to open the two-way audio.<\/p>\n “Don’t bother cleaning that up, Mother.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My voice boomed out of the little hidden speaker on the bookshelf, filling the quiet nursery.<\/p>\n Lorraine jumped with a sharp yelp and spun around, scanning for the source, her eyes landing on the dead wall camera she’d unplugged.<\/p>\n “Travis?” Her voice trembled. “Where\u2026 where are you?”<\/p>\n “I’m in my car, three blocks away,” I said, empty of emotion \u2014 the voice I use when a supply chain collapses and I have to cut a toxic vendor loose. “I’ve been watching you for the last hour, Lorraine.”<\/p>\n She froze. The blood drained from her face.<\/p>\n Her eyes found the digital clock on the shelf, and the realization of what it was hit her like a blow. She stepped back, hands flying to her mouth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then the narcissist’s survival reflex kicked in.<\/p>\n “Travis, honey, you scared me to death!” She forced a breathless laugh, stepping toward the camera. “A secret camera? You really shouldn’t spy on people. What you saw \u2014 it wasn’t what it looked like. Brooke was being so difficult, she knocked the glass over in a temper, I was only trying to teach her\u2014”<\/p>\n “Stop talking.” The edge in my voice cut her off. Her mouth snapped shut.<\/p>\n “I saw everything,” I said, spacing each word. “I saw you unplug the feed. I saw you smash the glass. I saw you hold my crying son hostage while you tried to make my bleeding wife crawl on the floor like a dog. And I sent the video to Paige. She remembers, Mother. She remembers exactly who you are.”<\/p>\n Lorraine recoiled as if struck.<\/p>\n The mention of Paige \u2014 the realization that her facade had shattered not just with me but with her daughter \u2014 broke her. Her face twisted into ugly, venomous rage. The sweet grandmother was dead. The monster stood fully unmasked.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “She is weak!” Lorraine shrieked, dropping the act entirely. “Your wife is a pathetic little girl who uses her medical issues to control you! I’m trying to make her strong! I’m trying to save your house! You should be thanking me! I raised you! I sacrificed everything for you!”<\/p>\n “You didn’t sacrifice anything. You want control, and you enjoy cruelty,” I said flatly. “But your reign in my house is over. Right now.”<\/p>\n “What are you saying? You’re going to throw your own mother out?”<\/p>\n “No,” I said. “I’m locking you out.”<\/p>\n On cue, I heard the rumble of a van pulling into my driveway. “Look out the front window, Lorraine.”<\/p>\n She marched out. I switched to the doorbell camera and watched her pull back the living-room curtains. A van reading Apex Security & Locksmiths<\/em> sat at the curb, two men already at the door pulling drills and lock cylinders from their bags.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “What are they doing?” she demanded, panic rising. “Travis, tell them to stop!”<\/p>\n “They’re changing every exterior lock on the house,” I said through the porch speaker. “Front door, back door, garage, windows. When they’re done, your key is a useless piece of metal.”<\/p>\n “You can’t do this!” she screamed, banging the glass. “My things are in here! My clothes!”<\/p>\n “Paige is driving Brooke and Jonah to a hotel I just booked. They’ll stay until the house is secure and cleaned. As for your things, I’ve hired a packing service. They’ll arrive in ten minutes, pack your two suitcases, and set them on the front porch.”<\/p>\n “Travis, please!” The rage collapsed into genuine panic. “You can’t treat me like this! I’m your mother! Where am I supposed to go?”<\/p>\n “I booked you a flight back to Chicago. It leaves at four. An Uber will be at the curb in thirty minutes for the airport. Go wait on the porch. If you interfere with the locksmiths, or refuse to leave, I’ll have the police remove you for trespassing \u2014 and I’ll show them the video of you endangering a minor and abusing a vulnerable adult.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Silence on the feed. Through the doorbell camera I watched my mother stand frozen in the living room, chest heaving, the illusion of the perfect matriarch burned to ash.<\/p>\n Slowly, defeated, she turned. Ten minutes later she walked out the front door and stood stiff on the porch while the locksmiths drilled out the deadbolts behind her.<\/p>\n She didn’t look at the camera again. When the Uber came, the movers loaded her bags, she got in, and the car pulled away down the quiet suburban street.<\/p>\n I sat there a long time after she was gone, the adrenaline draining out of me, leaving me hollow and exhausted and profoundly relieved.<\/p>\n Then I called Paige.<\/p>\n “She’s gone,” I said. “The locks are changed. Bring them home.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It’s been two years since that afternoon.<\/p>\n We never spoke to Lorraine again. Paige and I decided together to cut all contact.<\/p>\n Predictably, Lorraine tried to run a smear campaign back in Chicago \u2014 telling her circle her ungrateful children had abandoned her.<\/p>\n But Paige, with a ruthless clarity I’ll always admire, sent the nursery video to a few key members of our extended family.<\/p>\n The whispers stopped overnight. Lorraine’s carefully built social empire collapsed from the inside.<\/p>\n Brooke’s recovery took time. The physical wounds healed in a few months; the psychological ones needed gentler, longer care.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We went to therapy, alone and together. I had to unlearn the instinct to treat everything like a cold logistical equation and learn to be emotionally present.<\/p>\n Brooke had to learn that her gentleness wasn’t weakness \u2014 that she was allowed to take up space and demand respect.<\/p>\n Jonah is a thriving, chaotic, beautiful two-year-old now, tearing through the house with a joy that fills every corner. The nursery, once a site of trauma, is repainted a bright, sunny yellow. It’s his favorite playroom.<\/p>\n Sometimes I still check the cameras from my office. But now, when I log in, there’s no monster in the shadows. There’s Brooke on the floor surrounded by toys, laughing as Jonah tackles her. There’s a house that is genuinely safe.<\/p>\n I learned the hard way that you can’t always plan for the evil that enters your life, especially when it wears a familiar face. But you can plan how you respond. You can draw a line in the sand. You can protect the people you love \u2014 even if it means tearing down the family tree to save the fruit.<\/p>\n THE END.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I caught my mother holding our crying newborn hostage. My wife \u2014 still recovering from a near-fatal postpartum…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825,"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laptopsvilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Chapter 2 \u2014 The Math Isn’t Adding Up<\/h3>\n
Chapter 3 \u2014 The Feed<\/h3>\n
Chapter 4 \u2014 The Extraction<\/h3>\n
Chapter 5 \u2014 The Voice on the Bookshelf<\/h3>\n
Chapter 6 \u2014 A Safe House<\/h3>\n