Chapter 80: How?

Olivia’s POV

Leo walked into the room and closed the door behind him. The second I saw him, my entire body tensed. My hands tightened together on my lap as I searched his face, desperately trying to figure out what he had found before he even opened his mouth. Had they seen Owen near the clinic? Had they found the garden footage? Had they seen Lucas kissing me?

My heart was beating so hard that it hurt. I had spent the last forty minutes hoping there had been no cameras in those places, but now that Leo was standing in front of us, every bit of hope I had managed to hold onto disappeared. They had searched my face through two months of footage. There was no way they had found nothing.

Lucian finally turned away from the window, still holding the glass in his hand. "Well?" he asked.

"The security team finished the search, Alpha," Leo replied.

I stopped breathing.

Lucian’s expression remained unreadable. "And?"

Leo looked at him. "We found nothing."

For a second, I thought I had heard him wrong.

What?

Lucian’s brows pulled together slightly. "What do you mean, you found nothing?"

"We ran that man’s face through every available recording from the last two months," Leo explained. "He doesn’t appear anywhere around the packhouse before tonight. We checked the entrances, exits, hallways, the clinic area, the gardens, and the grounds. There is no record of him."

I stared at Leo, completely confused. That wasn’t possible. Owen had been here. I remembered standing near the clinic and speaking to him. It hadn’t been a dream, and I certainly hadn’t imagined him standing in front of me. So how could the cameras have found absolutely nothing?

Lucian remained silent for a few seconds before asking, "And Princess Annabel?"

Leo glanced briefly at me before returning his attention to Lucian. "We ran facial recognition on her as well. The only people the system picked up her speaking with regularly around the packhouse were the maids. Nothing else came up."

My confusion deepened.

The maids? That was it?

What about Owen near the clinic? More importantly, what about Lucas? There had to be cameras in that garden, yet according to Leo, the system hadn’t picked up any of it.

I should have been relieved. Lucian hadn’t discovered that I had lied about Owen, and he hadn’t discovered the kiss with Lucas. The two things I had spent the last forty minutes terrified of had somehow disappeared before they could destroy me.

But instead of relief, confusion settled heavily in my stomach.

Something wasn’t right.

Lucian looked at Leo. "You’re certain?"

"Yes, Alpha. We ran the search twice. The results were the same both times. The file has been sent to your computer. You can watch it yourself."

Lucian slowly lowered his glass, his expression giving nothing away. I stared at the floor, trying desperately to make sense of it. Owen had been near that clinic. Lucas had kissed me in that garden. I knew those things had happened.

So why did the cameras seem to think they hadn’t?

"Leave us," Lucian finally told Leo.

Leo nodded. "Yes, Alpha."

The moment the door closed behind him, silence returned to the room.

Lucian placed his glass on the table before turning toward me. I slowly stood from the couch, but the look on his face immediately made me wish I had remained sitting.

"You still lied to me," Lucian said.

My stomach tightened. "Lucian..."

I lowered my eyes. Of course. Surviving one problem didn’t mean I was free from the other ten waiting behind it.

"I don’t know what else to tell you," I said quietly.

"That seems to be the problem," Lucian replied. "You never do."

His words hurt, but I couldn’t exactly argue with them. I was standing in front of him pretending to be a dead woman. Honesty wasn’t exactly something I could defend myself with right now.

Lucian ran a hand over his face before looking at me again. "Go to your room."

I blinked. "What?"

"You heard me, Annabel. Go to your room."

I stared at him for a moment, but I didn’t have the energy to argue. Between Owen, the interrogation, the security search, and nearly having every secret in my life exposed in one night, all I wanted was to get away from this room and breathe.

"And you’re confined to your room until I decide otherwise," Lucian continued. "You will not leave without my permission. Not to wander around the packhouse, not to go into the garden, and definitely not through another secret tunnel. Am I clear?"

For a moment, I didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved. I was twenty-five years old, yet somehow my husband had just grounded me like a child.

"Yes, Lucian. I understand," I replied quietly.

For a few seconds, he simply looked at me. There was still anger in his eyes, but underneath it was something else I couldn’t quite read. Hurt, maybe. Disappointment. Whatever it was, I couldn’t deal with it tonight.

"Go," he finally ordered.

I turned toward the door without another word. For once, I was smart enough to know when an argument wasn’t going to help me.

By the time I reached my bedroom and closed the door behind me, Owen’s lie wasn’t even the biggest thing bothering me anymore.

It was the security footage.

I went into the bathroom and took a long shower, hoping the warm water would clear my head. It didn’t. Owen had been near the clinic. Lucas had kissed me in the garden. Yet somehow, neither incident had appeared in the search.

Maybe one camera malfunctioning would have made sense, but cameras in two completely different areas? And facial recognition clearly worked because it had identified me whenever I was with the maids.

By the time I changed into my nightclothes, one explanation had become impossible to ignore.

Someone had done something to those recordings.

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the floor.

Had someone deleted them?

But who?

Owen definitely didn’t have that kind of access. And if someone else had done it, why would they protect me?

With no answer, my thoughts eventually returned to Lucian.

He was angry with me, and this time, I couldn’t even blame him. Only this morning, things between us had finally started feeling different. He had stayed beside me after we slept together. He had told me he wanted to treat me like his wife. He had kissed my forehead before leaving.

Then, less than a day later, he had found me in an abandoned bookshop with another man who claimed to be my lover and thirty thousand dollars sitting between us.

When I put it like that, it sounded terrible.

I groaned and covered my face with both hands. How was I supposed to make this up to him? I couldn’t tell him the truth about Owen or explain why he had really been demanding money from me. But I could at least try to convince Lucian that I hadn’t been cheating on him.

The thought made me pause.

Why did it matter so much that he believed me?

I slowly lowered my hands.

Because I didn’t want him thinking I had betrayed him.

The answer came far too quickly.

Whatever was happening between Lucian and me was becoming harder to ignore. I still didn’t know exactly what I felt for him, and I wasn’t ready to put a name to it, but I knew I didn’t want to lose whatever had started growing between us.

Unfortunately, explaining that without explaining everything else was going to be difficult.

I lay back and pulled the blanket over myself. It was already past one in the morning, and exhaustion was finally beginning to overpower my thoughts. After everything that had happened, my body couldn’t keep fighting sleep.

Eventually, my eyes closed.

I didn’t know how long I had been asleep when I suddenly felt the mattress dip beside me.

My eyes flew open. I jerked upright and quickly switched on the bedside lamp, my heart pounding as light filled the room.

Lucas was sitting on the edge of my bed.

For several seconds, I simply stared at him. He looked completely relaxed, as though appearing in his brother’s wife’s bedroom after one in the morning was the most normal thing in the world.

Then he smiled.

"Hi."

I stared at him in disbelief. "What are you doing here? It’s after one in the morning."

Lucas gave a quiet scoff and shifted more comfortably on the edge of my bed.

"Is that how you say thank you?"

I froze.