Chapter 282 Lost
ADRIANA
The bath helped more than I expected. I came downstairs for lunch feeling less like something that had been wrung out and left on a surface, which was an improvement from where I’d been an hour ago. The dining room was empty when I arrived. The plates still covered, cutlery untouched, no sign that anyone had eaten yet despite Elijah saying he’d wait for me downstairs.
I sat down and lifted the covers anyway and started eating alone, and about ten minutes later Elijah and Hazel came in together from the direction of the grounds.
“I thought you were waiting for me,” I said.
“We went to check the perimeter.” Elijah sat down at his usual place, not before he pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Just a precaution.”
“I thought you were going to look at the cameras.”
He shook his head and reached for his fork. Hazel sat beside me and was quiet in a way that was slightly more deliberate than ordinary tiredness, but I filed that away and let it sit for now.
I needed to check something in the ballroom. I excused myself, walked there, stood in the doorway for approximately one second, and walked back.
“What was that?” Elijah asked when I sat back down.
“Penelope and her husband. They’re still there.”
Hazel looked up for the first time since she’d sat down. “Still bowing?”
“Still there. More of them now than when I left, actually.”
Elijah was quiet in a way that meant he was letting that information settle without commenting on it, which told me he already knew something about it.
“That’s Leo’s jurisdiction,” he said finally. “We gave him authority last night. Whatever happened is his to manage.”
“You’re not curious what they did?”
“I’m curious about several things right now. That’s not the top of the list.” he brushed it off.
A guard appeared in the doorway and Hazel was on her feet before the guard had taken two steps into the room, food still in her mouth, moving with the focused speed of someone who had been waiting for exactly this kind of interruption. She said something low to the guard and they both left.
I looked at Elijah. “Security issue?”
“Probably routine.” He didn’t look up from his plate.
Leo came in and sat down and I watched him pour himself a glass of water and look at neither of us directly, which was unusual for a boy who had always made eye contact with the ease.
He had bags under his eyes. The party had run until three in the morning and he’d been running it alone, which I had asked him to do, and which he had done without complaint.
“Everything went well last night?” I asked.
“Everything went well.” He looked at me then. “You don’t need to worry about the party.”
“I’m not worried about the party.” I let my eyes study his face. He looked exhausted even though he tried to hide it. “The people in the ballroom. What did they do?”
Something shifted in his face. “After you left, some of them started saying things. About you leaving me to handle the party alone. That you’d done it because—” He delivered the words with a forced shoulder shrug which he tried to make look casual. “That you were ashamed of me. Among other things.”
I looked at my son. My fifteen year old son who had spent the night managing a room full of Alphas and noblemen and political figures while his sister was missing and his parents were four hours away in the forest. He had to stand there and listen to people question whether he belonged in the family he’d been born into.
“Leo—”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I handled it.”
“I know you handled it. I’m sorry you had to.”
He shrugged again. “It’s nothing new. It was just more obvious last night.” He stood up. “I’m going to go check on the twins.”
He left and I looked at Elijah, who was still being quiet in a way I was finding increasingly difficult to ignore.
“What’s going on with you?” I said.
He looked at me. “Our daughter is missing, Adriana. I’m not exactly in a conversational mood.”
“You haven’t said more than six sentences to me since breakfast.”
“I’ve had things to deal with.”
“Then let me help you deal with them. That’s what I’m here for.”
He stood up. “I’ll see you later. I have to make some calls.”
He walked out and I sat alone at the table and stared at his half-finished plate and tried to work out what had changed between the room and now and whether I had missed something or whether he was simply carrying something he hadn’t decided to share yet.
I drove to the security room at the front gate because the walk was too far in the heat and I didn’t have the patience for it. The door was locked when I arrived and I had to wait for a guard to find the key, and when I finally got inside I told them to pull the footage from the previous night starting from the beginning of the party.
They clicked through screens for several minutes while I stood and watched and understood none of the technical side of what they were doing.
Then one guard leaned toward the other and said something quiet.
“My Queen.” He turned to me with the expression of someone delivering news they’d prefer not to be delivering. “We can’t seem to find the footage.”
“What do you mean you can’t find it?” I looked at the screen over his shoulder. “Were the cameras running last night?”
“Yes, My Queen. All of them were active. I checked the system log myself before the party. Everything was working.”
“Then where is the footage?”
He exchanged a look with the other guard and typed for another few seconds. “It’s just this section. The rest of the system is intact, we have footage from two nights ago, three nights ago. Just last night that’s gone.”