10
ADRIAN
Having her home feels right. For the first time in days, I want to sleep, yet I can’t get my mind off the unanswered questions. Why did she run? Where was she going? Who did she meet, and most importantly, who helped her?
She had a cell phone, clothes, food…all things she hadn’t walked out of the building with. Clothes maybe, but that’s it. The rest she would have had to buy elsewhere, or someone met up with her to assist.
My first suspicion is Kai. But even if he had helped her, he wouldn’t have lied to me about it. A little lie to others is nothing, but to me…never. None of my five would dare help her escape, then spend time searching for her alongside me. Especially with Andrea still in precarious health after her attack.
With Valentina’s escape, I feel like none of us got to properly process Vincent’s death. Of course, he was cremated, as requested, but none of us got to have a drink or tell stupid stories about him. Val stole those moments from me, and it’s another thing to add to her ever-growing list of sins. First of which is not answering my damn questions.
I stare down at her sleepy face, resting against the crook in my shoulder. She’s perfect like this, a living doll almost. And so young. When you look into her eyes, it’s impossible not to feel her life’s experiences there. But now, with her pretty eyes closed, she’s so fragile and so very, very young.
Marking her with my cum and putting my tracker back under her skin isn’t nearly enough to take the edge off my rage. My fingers clench, and I gently ease out of the bed so I don’t wake her, then head into the bathroom to grab a glass of water. Even as I gulp it down fast, letting some drip down onto my bare chest, I glare at the doorway leading back into the bedroom.
She thinks she’s safe for now, but she has no idea how far I’m willing to go to protect what’s mine. She should never have called for my help if she didn’t want to belong to me again. I would never have stopped hunting for her, even if it had taken years, but she might have been free longer if she’d run faster, farther, deeper into the dark. But even then…I make my home there, and not even the light in her can keep her safe from it.
I slam the glass onto the counter and head back out into the bedroom. Once I make it across the glass-strewn floor to the closet, I pull on some boxer briefs and step up beside the bed again. After a quick scan to make sure she’s fine and still breathing, I weave through the wreckage of our bedroom again and step out into the hallway. Here, the air doesn’t smell like her or her arousal, of sex. It’s clean, and I take a few deep breaths and head toward my office.
Since it’s early, I don’t pass anyone as I enter and take the chair behind my desk. I grab my laptop, flip it open, and then just stare…willing myself to do something to get my focus back where it needs to be: destroying the council once and for all.
I stare at the screen a moment longer and then sigh, bringing up the security feeds I’d combed through dozens of times. Each one a link in why Val had left that day. When I left for the council’s summon, I didn’t think for a second that she’d be gone when I returned. It hurts all over again, a lump in my throat spreading down into my chest. A dull ache I’m not able to dislodge.
Just as I have for the past couple of days, I watch and rewatch the feeds. I didn’t have cameras positioned at every angle around the penthouse, preferring to have some privacy, but now, people won’t even be able to take a shit without it being recorded.
Keeping them on a loop, I watch again. There’s nothing there. At least nothing to give me any kind of answers about why she left or who helped her. I need answers to both questions before I can even begin to reassemble our relationship.
She belongs to me. Her life, her secrets, her lies…all of them are mine. The fact that she’s holding things back is another kind of betrayal entirely. One that might ruin us for good if she doesn’t meet my demands soon. For now, I’ll let her sleep, but we’ll start again with the question-and-answer part of our reunion in the morning.
I started to watch again but then stopped with my finger hovering over the button. I’d seen where she walked out of the building and the street cameras, but I hadn’t looked at any inside the house except the foyer.
It only took a minute to find a few more cameras that gave me shots of her. Most were innocuous…her going about her day. But one, in particular, made me stop and rewind.
She’d come into my office at some point. Since she’d moved in, she hadn’t been in here once, only the command center. Not that I’d needed to keep her away, but it just never came up as most of my time was spent there or with her.
I bring up a few more file backups, the camera in my office that only sometimes stays on. Usually, for meetings, I shut it down. No need for video evidence of some of my activities, or anything that Kai or the others might organize in my name.
Thankfully, a file shows for the date she left, and I quickly open it, fast-forwarding to the time which matches the hallway file leading into the office.
It shows her entering the office, flipping on the light, and doing a quick scan of her surroundings. All perfectly normal, until she steps around my desk to study the pictures I keep on a shelf.
For a moment, I glance over my shoulder at the frames and then back at the screen. What made her stop and inspect these? Why now, why today?
I lean in to watch closely. She goes over the pictures one at a time, her fingers trailing over the images. I wish I could see her face and know what she was thinking, but all I can see is her back and her hand from the angle of the camera.
There’s a pause as her hand hovers over one of the frames. Then she picks it up and studies it closely, holding it near her face like she’s trying to memorize it. Just as quickly, she drops it and races from the room.
I turn and scan the shelf from top to bottom. One picture is missing. I find it on the floor, the glass over the image cracked. It’s the shot of my mother and me when I was just a boy, taken very shortly before she disappeared.
Why did this upset her? Did she realize it was my mother and me? Why would that make her run as if she’d seen a ghost?
I set the frame gently back on the shelf, making a note to replace the broken frame. Maybe she thought I’d be upset because she broke the frame with that particular picture. I’d hope she’d know me by now, to know that despite my temper, I wouldn’t punish her for such an accident.
I stare at the frame a little longer and then spin to face the camera feed again. Now I have more questions and still no answers.
It’s time my angel answers for her actions. I’ve let her rest from her ordeals long enough.
I flip the light off on my way back into the hall and run right into someone shrouded in the shadows.
The little gasp of pain she lets out tells me it’s Andrea. I release her wrists, which I’d grabbed to keep from her toppling from our impact.
She puts a few feet of distance between us. Even in the dark, I can see the yellowing bruises on her skin. She’s wearing a dark-colored robe—purple?—cinched tight from throat to toes, yet she still tries to pull her hair over her shoulder to hide her face.
I hold up my hands in surrender, so she knows I won’t touch her again. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”