Chapter 35 – Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
I’m such a fucking idiot.
I take off my glasses and pinch the bridge of my nose.
One single check box, that’s all it would have taken.
A single box checked in the security software I installed, and the system would have recognized and catalogued every instance of someone entering and leaving the camera view by Sydney’s door.
One single missed check box.
The box is checked now, and a few lines of code added were enough to set up a new alert, pinging me on my phone whenever a person comes into view.
But now I have hours and fucking hours worth of video footage to scrub through manually.
I start with last night, when she unlocked the door for me, stopping momentarily to palm my erection at the memory. I speed through the footage until I see myself walk up her stairs and disappear.
You can’t see her door. Another idiotic fucking mistake, one I made intentionally to protect her privacy.
One that makes me want to tear the camera off the roof with my bare hands and change the placement.
I send a quick message to the team I sent to install it, instructing them to correct the positioning as soon as possible, and they message back almost immediately to let me know it’ll be done within the hour.
Maybe I should have put a camera in the damn apartment after all.
Fuck. I close my eyes and let myself imagine what it would be like to have a tape of our time together. I have to adjust myself in my pants at the thought. Later, I promise myself. The next time I have her.
The video footage is set to 4x speed, but I tap my keyboard and speed through even faster. I watch. And watch. And watch.
And at just past five in the morning, I see myself appear and walk down the stairs, flowers in hand.
What the fuck?
I rewatch the footage again, slower.
I walk up the stairs.
I walk down them.
And in between, no one else appears. Between those two events, no one goes up her stairs to deliver a bouquet of lilies, no one walks through the parking lot behind her shop. But somehow, they show up at her door.
When I call my security guy, I don’t bother with hellos.
“How hard would it be to alter the footage from those cameras you installed?” I ask.
“Almost impossible,” they answer. “Why?”
My molars hurt from clenching them so hard. “Who could do it?”
“A securities expert,” they venture, in a tone that makes me think they’re guessing. “Someone with top-notch coding experience.”
Someone like Jade’s brother, Justin.
Two possibilities exist here. One, someone hacked my system, a system almost impossible to hack.
Two, someone somehow bypassed the security system without showing up on my camera, and the only way that could be is if they were walking from the direction of the empty unit next door. A blind spot on my camera feed.
I sit back in my computer chair and rub my eyes, imagining all the ways I would take this faceless man apart, piece by piece, in our wet lab.
I try to search through previous video files, looking for him. If someone is staying in that unit, the fucker has to leave eventually, right? Has to go to work, has to go out, has to meet friends.
It takes me almost a full day of searching before I find one fucking image of him.
A dark gray sweatshirt, hood pulled up, non-descript jeans. He’s carrying a paper bag full of groceries. He reaches the top of the stairs and disappears.
“Fuck.” I watch the footage again. There’s no frame where his face is visible.
No one lives in that unit. If someone had signed a lease, moved in their things, I would have seen it. I would have known.
Which means…
A knock on my security room door has me turning in my chair. Alec doesn’t wait for me to answer. He just pushes the door open and storms in. Like usual.
“We have a problem,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Aside from you fucking up our lives with your psychotic control issues and lies, you mean?” I ask, my voice cold.
Alec stills, expression darkening, fist clenching at his sides. I can tell he’s biting back a lecture on “my place” and “disrespect.” But the fucker deserves a little disrespect after the shit he pulled.
I wonder how he’d feel if he knew I could still smell her on my skin, still taste her pussy on my lips? If he knew I made her come more than any other man she’s had before?
I turn my attention back to my screens, so he can’t see the smug look on my face.
“I already solved your problem. All three board members have been replaced, and your assistant is drafting the press release,” I tell him. “You won’t have any issues with the newest members. We have enough on them to—”
“We have a different fucking problem.” Alec crosses my room and tosses a photo on my keyboard.
I pick it up and stare at it.
And stare.
And stare.
It’s Sydney. My Sydney. Curled on her side in a ball on her couch, face angelic in sleep.
“Where did you get this?” I ask. It’s a miracle my voice remains steady.
“It was addressed to me, sent to our office,” he tells me through clenched teeth. “Hand delivered, it didn’t go through the mail system.”
My hands are steady. My breathing is calm. No one would ever know the monster inside of me is clawing at my skin, screaming to get out.
I put the photo down.
Alec paces the room as I pull up the live footage of her shop, my heart thundering in my chest until I find her. Safe. Chasing her kitten around the café, Jade doubled over in laughter.
“I’m done waiting,” Alec snaps. “And I don’t give a fuck what’s going on between the four of us right now. Put it aside. Dante is escalating, and we need to bring him down. Now.” He glances up at my screens and then back to me. “Where’s Viper?”
“At this exact minute? No idea. You know he doesn’t like to be monitored,” I mutter. He was there earlier, at her shop, but I haven’t seen him since.
“Ash?” Alec presses. Ashton is just as pissed at Alec as I am, maybe more. But Alec is right, our anger can wait. Protecting her can’t.
“Licking his wounds, probably. Sydney is still icing him out, and he got his ass handed to him in his last fight.” I shoot him a look. “I doubt he wants to see you right now. And I don’t blame him.”
I sure as hell haven’t forgiven him yet for lying to us. For making me think this was my fault.
“Find him and get his ass back here. I don’t give a shit how pissed off either of you are right now. I need all of us together on this.”
“Fine,” I tell him. “I have something else, too. Might be related. I found some camera footage from the ‘traffic incident’ Sydney mentioned.” His jaw ticks at the mention of her name, body tensing, but I continue.
“I don’t think this was random. The car blew through a red light, and when she sprinted across the street, they went right for her, jumped the curb.
It was… closer than I’m comfortable with.
” Close enough just remembering it makes that monster in me rise, remembering the fury I’d felt when I watched the footage I’d pulled from the city’s red-light cameras.
Then I remember her rage, that beautiful anger as she threw a brick after the car, and my dick throbs.
“License plate?”
“Ah, nothing.” I adjust myself subtly, under my desk. "There was no license plate visible from the cameras, and it was a black Honda Civic. Not exactly a rare car.”
“I don’t like it. Anything else?”
“Maybe,” I admit, thinking about the unit next door. The lilies. “But I’m not sure what it means, yet. I’m looking into it.”
He nods, satisfied. “Keep your eyes on her. Dante is planning something, and we can’t let her get caught in the crossfire.” Alec draws his shoulders back. “I’m done waiting for him to make his next move. It’s time to go on the offensive.”
“The offensive?” I repeat, raising an eyebrow.
“We hit him hard, where it hurts. Strike back before he can take this further, draw his focus off her.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Alec’s grin is dark and terrifying. “I want to take everything from him. Wipe everything he’s touched off this Earth.”