Chapter 301 Helping My Son Move
ADRIANA
Roy came back the next morning with another brown envelope and I knew before he opened his mouth what it was going to say.
“Same result?”
“Latex gloves. Whoever handled the letter was careful with both the paper and the envelope. The partial from the letter wasn’t enough and the envelope didn’t give us anything new.” He set it on the table between us. “I’m sorry. I had my contact run it twice.”
I sat down and looked at the envelope and thought about how thoroughly this person had planned every step of what they’d done. The gloves. The doctored footage. The timing of Simone’s arrival. The letter with the specific personal demand that could only have come from someone who understood exactly what my marriage meant and exactly how to try to break it. All of it constructed by someone who was careful and patient and had been watching us for a long time.
The door opened and Elijah walked in.
He looked at Roy, at the envelope, at my face, and arrived at the correct conclusion within approximately two seconds.
“You can stop hiding it,” he said. “I already know what you’ve been doing.” He came in and sat down. “I found the envelope in Lana’s room. I know Roy has been running analysis and I know the results.”
I looked at him. “You knew and you didn’t say anything?”
“You wanted to handle it before you brought it to me. I respected that.” He paused. “But we’re past the point where keeping things separate helps either of us. Whatever we’re dealing with, we deal with it together.”
Roy glanced between us with the expression of a man who was glad someone else had initiated that conversation.
“The footage,” I said to Elijah. “You have a copy. I want to see it.”
He held my gaze for a moment. Then he left the room and came back with a USB drive and handed it to me without argument. I took it directly to Leo’s room because Leo was the one in this house with the equipment and the skills I needed.
He was at his desk when we came in, laptop open, and he looked up when I entered.
“I need you to look at something,” I said. “Tell me what you see.”
I gave him the drive. He plugged it in and pulled up the footage and we stood behind him and watched.
He watched it once in silence. Then he leaned forward and watched it again, slower this time, and I saw the moment his expression changed.
“That’s not Roy,” he said.
“No,” Elijah said behind me. “We established that. The footage was doctored to make it look like him.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Leo turned in his chair. “Look at the clothing. Whoever this is — they’re not wearing what Roy was wearing that night. I saw Roy at the party. I spoke to him. He was in a grey jacket. This person is wearing something darker.” He turned back to the screen. “Someone wasn’t edited in. Someone was edited out. A completely different person was replaced with a body that moves like Roy but isn’t.”
I leaned over his shoulder and looked at the footage again with that information and I could see what he meant, something slightly off about the movement, the way the figure occupied space came from a composite rather than a real recording.
“Can you find out who was edited out?” I said.
He shook his head slowly. “I can see that someone was. I can’t reverse engineer who. You’d need someone with much better tools than I have.” He pressed his lips into a thin line. “But I can tell you one thing. Whoever did this is good. Really good. This is not amateur work.”
I straightened up and looked at Elijah. He looked back at me.
“Someone with access to professional editing technology,” he said quietly. “And access to our security system to pull the footage in the first place.”
“Which means someone who has been inside this house,” I said. “Not just at the party. Someone with enough sustained access to know the camera positions, the system layout, how to pull specific files.” I paused. “This goes back further than we thought.”
I went back to Lana’s room after that and began packing her bag for the hospital visit. The doctor had asked me to bring her back today for her follow-up tests, and as I folded her things and tucked them into the bag I thought about the person who had taken her and all the elaborate architecture they had built around themselves and I made a silent promise to my daughter, who was lying on her back looking at the ceiling with the serene indifference of someone who had been through considerable difficulty and was now just glad to be in a warm room.
I was going to find them.
A guard carried the bags downstairs for me, and when I reached the ground floor I found Lucien in the entrance hall with boxes around him, apparently still in the process of settling in. He looked up when he heard me coming and immediately did the particular thing he did when he encountered me.
“Room seven,” I said. “Third floor.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Are you settling in all right? Do you need anything?”
He blinked. “No. I’m — no, thank you.”
I was halfway to the door when Simone appeared from the direction of the side entrance, dressed to go out, looking around the entrance hall with the possessive interest of someone mentally redecorating.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
She turned slowly. She tried to smile but it fell right through and her lips turned down in a sneer. “My son is moving his things. I came to help.”
“He was moving his things. He’s done now.” I held her gaze. “You were told clearly that the house is not for you. The annex is your accommodation until the end of the week, at which point Hazel will have arranged something permanent.”
“You can’t just—”
“I absolutely can,” I said pleasantly. “I am the Queen of this kingdom, the first and only wife of the King, and I have the full and explicit authority to determine who resides in this house. You have been told. Do not make me say it a third time.” I looked at Lucien, keeping my voice gentle as I spoke. “Your mother needs to go. I’ll have a guard help her out.”
I left before she could respond, Lana tucked against my chest, and I got into the car and let the driver take us to the hospital while I sat in the back and thought about editing software and long-range patience and the person who had been inside my home for long enough to know exactly where every camera was.
The doctor saw us immediately and I stood to the side while he ran his checks, and afterward he sat across from me with the cautious optimism I was coming to recognize as his default register when it came to Lana.
“She’s gained good weight since the last visit. Her temperature and vital signs are consistent with healthy recovery. There’s no indication of any lasting effects from the exposure.” He looked at me. “She’s doing remarkably well, My Queen. She’s a strong little one.”
I looked at my daughter, who was in the nurse’s arms staring at the ceiling.
“Yes,” I said. “She is.”