Chapter 40 Zane
Zane
After leaving dinner, I go with Bentley to the grocery store.
I’m no stranger to grocery shopping often, and I’ve never been a fan of grocery delivery.
Considering half my job is diet, I am pretty picky about my produce, meat, and eggs.
Fuck it, I think it’s safe to say I’m just not an online shopper. Blame my age; it’s fine.
“Alright, we got your milk,” I say, tapping the tubs of baby formula. “And my milk,” I say as I set a canister of protein powder in the cart. “Banana mush for you, fresh bananas for me. Cereal. Wipes. Lotion because we both need soft skin. What am I forgetting?”
“Diapers,” Demi says, and I turn around just in time to catch a box of size one diapers flying at my face.
“Damn,” I say as I catch it. “How did I miss that?”
“You’re tired. It’s easy to forget,” she says with a smile.
“Yeah, until the middle of the night when I’m trying to change his diaper in the dark and realize the bin is empty,” I say with a sigh.
“How are you two doing?” she asks. “I miss this little guy.”
“We’re surviving,” I say just as Bentley spits up. “Sort of.”
But Demi just laughs, taking the burp cloth from my shoulder. I’ve learned to just wear the damn thing because I always end up needing it. I swear this kid spits up half his milk every time I feed him. She wipes his chin.
“You know,” she says, picking up one of the canisters of formula, “I bet if you switched to the gentle tummies version, you’d be wearing less of his lunch.”
“Gentle tummies?” I ask, and she leads me back to the baby aisle. Then she grabs a can that looks similar but with a different colored lid. “It’s the same thing. Same brand. Just ingredients that are softer on the stomach. He seems to have a lot of acid. This should help with that.”
“Thanks,” I say, trading the cans out. Then I run my hand through my hair and hold it there for a moment. “She would have known that,” I say.
“Probably. But everyone learns eventually,” Demi says nicely.
“How is she?” I ask.
“Not great,” she answers.
“I figured,” I nod. “Is her boss still riding her ass? Even though she got what she wanted, I’m sure that won’t be the end of it.”
Demi gives me an odd look. “You mean…you don’t know?” she asks.
“Know what?”
“Zane, Ashlyn doesn’t work at Sigma anymore,” she says, and I clench my jaw.
“You mean that bitch fired her even though she ultimately got what she wanted?”
Demi’s expression shifts a little. I wouldn’t say she looks angry, but she does look a little upset. “No. Ashlyn quit before giving Deborah what she wanted.”
“What?” I ask. Because I don’t know what else to say.
Demi nods before clicking her tongue. “You know what? I’ll leave you and Bentley to your shopping,” she says, planting a kiss on the top of Bentley’s head. Then she looks up at me. “Talk to her.”
* * *
After we get home, I feed and bathe Bentley and put him to bed. Then I grab my laptop and sit on the couch. For a second, I just sit there because I am still in shock.
Ashlyn quit her job. She quit before the photos were published.
“She didn’t take the photos,” I say out loud before wiping my hand down over my face. Then I stop.
Okay. So if she didn’t take them, then who did?
I open my laptop and start digging. I look at all the photos that were taken the night I first slept with her.
They’re not terrible. The person knows how to take photos, but they’re blurry and low quality.
It looks like the work of a fan or a stalker, not a photographer.
Just someone who can’t afford a decent camera.
Then I look at the recent photos. High quality. A better camera. Other than the sex photo, they’re all taken from another room. Like me getting out of the shower. There’s enough steam in the room to blur things. But they’re taken through a cracked door.
Same with the gym photos and sleeping photos. All the angles suggest the photographer was hiding.
They’re all so invasive. So private. Especially the one of me sleeping. I mean, it’s one thing to take photos when I’m naked, but it’s another to take photos of me asleep. Guard down. Unaware.
Then I stop.
I zoom in on the photo where I’m sleeping.
The angle is obvious that the person was standing in the doorway.
It’s been filtered to black and white. My chest is exposed, and I am fast asleep.
But I’m not the only one. On the other side of me, slightly blurred out on purpose, is the soft silhouette of Ashlyn laying on her side, facing away from me.
It’s so shadowed that if you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t see it.
And considering most people are probably looking at my abs.
I don’t say that to be vain. It’s just the audience.
But the point is, if she is laying there, dead asleep, there’s no way she could have taken the photos. And considering this particular photo, I don’t believe she hired someone to do it either. I don’t think she had anything to do with it.
I set my laptop aside and grab my phone, going to the security app. I go through the footage from the three remaining cameras from the night Bentley was dropped off as well as the night I met Ashlyn. I can’t find much, but there is one thing.
In the footage from when Bentley was dropped off, in the dark distance there is enough movement to confirm he was dropped off by a woman on foot.
A little zooming in confirms that it was, in fact, Nikki.
Not that I didn’t already know that. I’d know her frame anywhere.
She made the mistake of wearing shorts, not pants, and the tiny butterfly tattoo she has on the back of her ankle is visible.
I switch to the footage of the hot tub crashing night, because that was before I took down most of my cameras.
If there was movement that night, it would make sense that I wasn’t alerted.
There was a lot of movement that night, thanks to Ashlyn.
I skim through it, one minute at a time, one camera at a time until I see it.
The photographer wasn’t just taking photos outside. They were in the hallway. I know this because there is a mirror in the hallway and a mirror in the room we were having sex in. Both mirrors reflect each other and show a camera, though it’s too dark to make out the person.
“Alright,” I say, skipping ahead. I switch to one of the property cameras and sure enough, there is someone leaving the property. Someone who has a butterfly tattoo on their ankle, I recognize.
“Holy shit…”