Tainted

30

~Sebastian~

Delilah had made me turn the damn laptop off 20 minutes into watching Stephen tossing paper balls at the girls. She was fine. Everything was fine until Stephen called to say she left and there was an explosion and now she'd disappeared. I tracked her phone but it wasn't moving. It was on but the tracker wasn't working. The same with the 3 other trackers I had on her. Built into every bra she owned and every pair of shoes. For moments exactly like this. I don't get why they aren't working. I kept calling but it was just going to voicemail. It was ringing out so it wasn't turned off. I had Christian tracing cameras to work out what happened whilst I got dressed. I was literally out of the door when Cian pulled up and she went upstairs.

Stephen and Em showed up 20 minutes later. It was her car. I didn't for a second believe Kostin was stupid enough to try and kill Poppy. The man had tried bugging the house through flowers and I'd burned one of his biggest business to the ground with half his men inside for it. He knew he was fucking with the wrong person and I'd received an apology for him thinking he'd get away with it. He wasn't about to fuck it up again. Not by threatening my wife's life. That was too far for even him.

Something wasn't right.

I sat at the top of the table, listening to Christian and the rest of the guys go over possibilities. We had nothing to run off right now. The cameras were turned off before Pip even parked up. I looked up at the clock on the wall, my watch, then my mobile. I'd been in here for 2 hours. The dining room. Not even downstairs. The door was open. I haven't heard Pip. I haven't heard a damn thing.

Pushing my chair out, it scrapes on the floor.

"I'll be back. Keep talking. Work it out." I pull the door closed behind me, head up the stairs and into our untouched room. The bed's still a wreck, tissues everywhere, sheets unmade, Pips not there. Not in the bathroom or the closet and I start to panic. "Pip?" I stand still, waiting for a noise or anything. Not a sound. I head to the library but it's empty. Her mum's in her room alone. I try the spare room door and it's locked. "Poppy?" Why is she in there? She hasn't been in there since- well, ever. I stand back, pulling up the cameras on my phone, putting the secondary lock code on to turn them on and get the live feed. Having cameras in every single room feels like a violation sometimes but when Poppy agreed to marry me, I put them in for moments like this, or during home invasions so I could see where people were in the house. Only I knew the passcode to turn the bedroom cameras on. Not even Christian knew this one and I got an alert with the IP address on my mobile when it was used too so if anyone ever did turn it on without me knowing, I'd know.

She's sat in the middle of the floor staring at the door. There's a huge pile of furniture in front of the door and she's sat there wrapped in a towel.

"Pip, baby?" No response. "Come on Princess. Move the furniture and let me in." She doesn't move. Doesn't blink. She's completely frozen. To the point I'm almost certain the camera is broken and it's not working now. But I can see her breathing, the curtain of the open window floating with the wind. Somethings wrong. Really really really wrong. She's never needed to block the door. Even when we've argued. She knows if she locks the door I won't unlock it unless I absolutely need to. No. This is her trying to keep herself safe. To keep everyone out.

It snaps in me. Like someone dumped the information out of a filing cabinet and scrawled it on the whiteboard in my brain, holding a neon sign in front of it so I couldn't miss it.

The night Rowan died. She'd pulled furniture in front of her door to stop Cian getting back in after he touched her. She said she did that every night after Rowan died. So, he couldn't touch her without her being awake. Rage ripped through me and I turned, marching back down the stairs and throwing the dining room doors open.