This is by far the nicest car I have ever gotten into, and the thought alone is more than daunting. But I have to stop stalling, to stop lying in this fathomless pit of nothingness. I have to get my life back.
So, I adjust the seat, and I press the button to start the engine, and I tell myself this was just the first day to becoming the Sloane I used to know. I want to be that girl again. I’m so tired of being afraid.
This is my ticket back to where I belong.
Chapter Eight
Iwatch the live feed as Sloane navigates her way through the city back home. A tracker probably would have sufficed; I could have played that off as a precaution for my daughter’s safety, but a camera inside the vehicle? One on the outside, too? Cameras I didn’t make my daughter’s new nanny aware of.
Leaning back on the couch, I keep watching, studying the side profile of her face, the gentle and elegant slope of her nose, the way she tucks her lower lip between her teeth while she concentrates. She drives carefully, clearly a little uncomfortable behind the wheel, but I expected that. I didn’t warn her or put it in the contract, but it was only right that she have a vehicle to get around in. I knew from Savannah that she didn’t, and I needed one anyway. The Porsche would have only worked for so long.
When she pulls up to her little townhouse, putting the car in park, I keep watching. She climbs out, gathering all her things, and makes her way to her door.
She’s so fucking pretty it hurts to look at her. Her hair falls down her back, a little less tame than it was this morning, her clothes wrinkled. She didn’t quite look right. She looked good, in her tight pencil skirt and blouse, her hair tamed so not even a strandwas out of line, but it didn’t look like her. I’ve seen her on a night out, where her dress looked as if it had been painted on and her hair was more mane than anything else, I’ve seen her in her yoga pants and oversized tee and in her jeans and sweater.
Sloane pulls out her keys at the door and then looks over her shoulder, pausing as her eyes flick from side to side, watching the street behind her for a few seconds before she goes ahead and unlocks her door, placing a different key into every lock until it gives, and she can let herself in. She gives one more glance to the street before she shuts the door behind her and locks it once more.
The camera feed cuts off now there’s no motion to detect, going dark on my computer screen.
I can tap back in whenever I want to. It’ll go live if it detects any motion outside her house anyway, and immediately starts recording the moment the engine turns over.
Keeping the feed live, I place my laptop down on the table and relax back on the couch. I had a shit ton of work to do today, but I didn’t get any of it done. Malakai, the man I work for who also happens to be one of my best friends, is having some trouble with a rival. While nothing’s confirmed, suspicious activity is emerging, and he wants me to investigate. I had plans to tap into his rival’s network today, a man named Richard Taylor, who has already caused issues for us previously. He had hired a man who wanted one of us dead, though he had played it off as a mistake. The man is a little fish in a very big pond, but he’ll scheme and beg to keep himself swimming.
But with a rise in missing women in the city and all clues leading back to him, none of us are willing to let his schemes slide.
We don’t worry about his reach; he has none, but if he poses a threat to everything we care about? We will take him down.
Guilt rolls through me. I should have done more today. Instead, I searched her name in databases I shouldn’t have access to and combed through photos, but didn’t find her anywhere. Sloane doesn’t exist on the internet.
It’s a red flag. Everyone has a digital footprint —everyone.Bank statements, credit reports, social media, and emails, but Sloane Reynolds doesn’t exist as far as the internet is concerned, not even on the dark web.
I just need to dig a little deeper.
I can findanyone.
The night goes easier than I’ve been used to with Lily. She wakes up a few times for a feed and a change, but she goes back to sleep almost immediately after I meet her needs. I still haven’t found Seline. Again, she’s been wiped off the face of the earth. No transactions since the night she dropped her off on my doorstep and moved out of the city. I caught a glimpse of her in the next state over a couple of days later, but I haven’t seen her since. I almost don’t want to look for her, but the need for answers eats at my consciousness, and the need to protect my daughter makes me want to rip her apart. It’s a slippery slope to be on.
I wake early the following day. The sun has barely crested the horizon, turning the sky into this milky blue that washes a dullness across the yard. I stand with a coffee, the monitor next to me, as I wait for Lily to wake in about twenty minutes. Sloane will be here by eight, where we will repeat the same song and dance from yesterday. It’ll be easier eventually, having another person constantly in my space, but I’ve spent so much time alone that her presence crawls beneath my skin. An itch I cannot scratch.
Once Lily wakes up, I give her, her morning bottle and then get her dressed for the day. She smiles and babbles as I do it, attempting to grab my fingers and wrists as I wrangle her into one of the rompers Willow and Savannah picked out for her when they went shopping last week.
This room still isn’t good enough for a baby, too dark, too serious but the changes in my life have paused my hand in creating anything new here. Lily deserves a room that is hers, and this is it, even if it doesn’t look like it.
Perhaps I’m just not good enough to be a father, too caught up in the web of darkness inside my own head, and it makes it hard to fully grasp what I have. I have a daughter, a piece of me, and while the overpowering urge to protect and keep her safe is there, the connection between us isn’t.
With a sigh, I lift her from the changing table, cradling her against me, and head through to my bedroom where I place her safely in the center of my bed and change myself, ready for Sloane to arrive in ten minutes. She didn’t seem pleased to catch me the way I was yesterday, so I won’t make that same mistake again, even if I’d had a shitty night and overslept.
Placing my glasses on, I pick Lily back up and head down just as Sloane pulls the Range Rover into the driveway. She knocks instead of using her key, so I head to the door to let her in.
She’s dressed impeccably again today, in a tight pair of navy-blue tailored pants that stop just shy of her ankles and a cream blouse that has these odd ruffles around the neckline. She wears her ashy hair pulled high in a ponytail, with not a single strand loose. Her eyes appear bluer today, but they’re a little red, like she’s rubbed them too many times.
“Are you hungover?” I block the doorway.
Those stunning eyes widen, “Excuse me?”
“Your eyes, they’re red.” I point out, “And if you can’t show up to work at least fully functioning, then this will not work.”
“Well, fuck, Dean,” Her hands go to her hips, “I knew you were an asshole before, but you really had to nail it in, didn’t you?”
