Chapter 201 His Private Property

Chapter 201 His Private Property
Chapter 201: His Private Property 
Reese 

“What do you mean?” My voice sounded steadier than the rest of me felt. “Which wife are you referring to?”

I prayed it wasn’t Sav. The hope was irrational and I knew it, but I held onto it anyway. 

Somehow the idea of old footage involving Dahlia would have sat differently in my chest than anything involving Savannah. 

My hands had already gone cold. The headache and everything from the cemetery now had a new layer pressed on top of it. More than anything I wanted this to be a misunderstanding. 

Maybe it was a distorted thing Ramsey had only half seen and then magnified in his own head.

Because if it was real, if my younger brother had actually watched Roman’s wife in a private moment, Roman was going to lose his mind. 

And that was me keeping things tame. 

He would set fire to this house with Randall in it. I suddenly understood why Ramsey had broken down earlier.

This was bad. Really bad. 

Roman had always been private to the point of violence when it came to Sav. Especially their intimate life. 

He never let anyone in on their sex life. Never entertained those sorts of jokes or discussions because it was clear… 

His wife was his private property. 

While he was breathing, no other man was supposed to see her body. Not by accident. Not by design. Least of all one of his own brothers.

“Ramsey.” I kept my voice low. “Say something. What did you see? Who did you see?”

He looked small against the white bedding. “Ma’am Savannah,” he whispered. “It was ma’am Savannah and our brother, Roman. In the bathroom.”

The words legit landed like a physical blow in the gut. Fuck. 

“Bathroom?” I repeated. “What bathroom? Who showed you this video?”

My pulse was loud in my ears. 

Part of me still insisted I had misheard. Roman and Sav could have whatever private habits they wanted behind closed doors. Making a recording of it—letting that recording exist where another man could find it—was not one of them. 

Roman would rather take another bullet than allow that kind of exposure.

“You saw what?” I asked again, because the alternative still refused to settle.

“It was Randy,” Ramsey said, the panic rising again. “But please don’t hurt my brother. He won’t do it again.”

I was on my feet before the sentence finished. “Randall? He showed you a video of Sav and Roman?”

Ramsey nodded quickly. “Yes. But he didn’t mean to make me see it. He was watching the footage in the bathroom when I walked in. It was from when Roman was here the last time. Ma’am Savannah was doing what ma’am Lizzie was talking about at dinner.”

The implication unfolded in ugly, precise pieces. So my earlier suspicions hadn’t been paranoia. 

Randall had put cameras where they had no business being. 

If he had footage of Roman and Sav from a previous visit, there was no reason to believe our own bedroom had been spared. 

The thought of him watching anything that belonged to us made my stomach turn.

Roman was not going to take this calmly. Randall would be fortunate if he only lost teeth. And Ramsey, simply for having seen it, would be caught in the blast radius whether he deserved it or not. 

I could not let that happen. An innocent party was not going to pay for Randall’s rot or for the power Reginald had carelessly handed him. 

This was their mess. 

Reginald’s indulgence. Randall’s appetite for perversion disguised as security. 

And now the consequences were sitting in front of me in the form of a terrified boy who still believed the people in this house were capable of ordinary love.

I started pacing the length of the room, one hand shoved into my hair. 

There was no clean way to hide this from Roman. He would find out. He always did. And if he learned I had known and said nothing, the damage would only compound.

“Roman is going to kill Randy, isn’t he?” Ramsey asked quietly, pulling me back.

“That’s not the part I’m focused on right now.” I stopped and faced him. “I need you to answer some questions. When did you see this footage? Two years ago?”

“Two months ago,” he said. “But it was footage from the time Roman got shot.”

The timeline made it worse. Randall had kept material from one of the ugliest stretches we all had lived through and turned it into something he could replay at leisure. And probably wank off too. 

“Where was the footage? On his personal computer?”

“Yes. On his computer.” Ramsey’s words came faster now, as if getting them out might lessen the weight. “He was in the shower when I walked in and saw it. When he came out he had his phone with him too.” 

A clearer, uglier picture formed. “The footage was playing on his phone as well?”

“Yes. There’s a way all Randy's devices are connected. They mirror each other. So he can monitor the cameras from anywhere. It was playing on both the computer and the phone.”

“He knew you saw it?” I asked. “He wasn’t bothered that you had walked in on that?”

“No.” Ramsey stood, crossed to a drawer, and pulled out a photograph. He held it out like evidence and apology at the same time. “He gave me this. A photo of this woman. Randy said she is our mother.”

I took it.

The woman in the image shared enough features with Ramsey and Rosie that the claim was not immediately dismissible. Soft structure through the face. Something in the eyes. 

Randall had known exactly which currency would work. Emotions. 

He had bought silence with the one thing Ramsey had always been hungry for—some fragment of origin that Reginald had never bothered to give him cleanly. A mother. 

Cunning did not even begin to cover it.

I looked from the photograph back to my brother. “Ramsey,” I said, “can you get me that footage? That’s the only way I can keep Roman from directing any of this at you. Help me get it from Randall.”

His eyes widened. “He won’t be mad at me?”

“Not if you help me fix it,” I said. “Just get me the footage.”

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand, calculating with the same precision he applied to everything else. 

“Randy is asleep now. He won’t be awake for another seventy-three minutes. I can sneak in and get his flash drive. It’s in there.”

The confidence in his voice was almost painful. 

He still believed the simplest version of the people around him—that Randall loved him enough not to hurt him, that helping would erase the crime of having seen something he never should have been shown.

“Be careful,” I told him. “When cornered, people become strangers.” 

He nodded, a small, determined smile appearing for the first time since the tears. “Randy won’t hurt me. He loves me.”

If Randall had cameras on Roman and Sav, what else had he been watching?