Chapter 5 - Hidden Cameras
We drove south along Lake Shore Drive.
The rain battered the bulletproof glass.
The city skyline loomed like a wall of jagged black teeth against the stormy
sky.
Victor drove fast, weaving through the sparse midnight traffic with cold,
mechanical precision.
He checked his mirrors every ten seconds.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked, clutching the seatbelt against my chest.
My silk dress was soaked.
My teeth wouldn't stop chattering.
Victor reached into the backseat and tossed a thick wool coat into my lap.
"Put it on," he said.
The coat was warm.
It smelled like him—smoky cedar and rain.
"We aren't going to a hotel," Victor continued.
"Adrien monitors my father’s corporate accounts. Any credit card swipe will
light up a terminal in his office. We’re going somewhere off the grid."
"What about my studio?" I demanded.
Panic clawed at my throat.
"The footage of the crash. If Adrien’s men get there first, they’ll burn the
building to the ground!"
"My men are already securing the block," Victor answered smoothly.
He tapped the steering wheel.
"Your servers are cloud-backed, correct?"
"Local backup only," I whispered.
"I didn't want to pay monthly subscription fees for cloud storage. The primary
hard drive is in the basement office behind the yoga studio."
Victor let out a low curse under his breath.
"Then we take a detour."
Twenty minutes later, Victor killed the headlights three blocks away from my
studio in Wicker Park.
The neighborhood was silent.
The storefronts were shuttered.
My studio sat on the corner of Milwaukee Avenue.
Lotus & Bone Yoga.
The gold lettering on the front window looked cheerful and innocent.
It made my stomach twist.
Everything in my life for the past six months was tainted by Adrien’s lies.
Victor stepped out of the vehicle first.
He surveyed the street.
No parked cars with tinted windows.
No shadows lurking in doorways.
"Fast and quiet," he instructed, opening my door.
"We get the hard drive, we leave."
We slipped through the service alley behind the studio.
I used my master key to unlock the heavy metal back door.
The lock clicked.
The smell of lavender and eucalyptus welcomed me.
It should have been comforting.
Instead, it made me sick.
Victor pulled a miniature tactical flashlight from his pocket, shielding the
beam with his fingers.
The faint circle of light cut across the hardwood floors of the main practice
room.
Mirrors lined the walls, reflecting our ghostly silhouettes.
"Basement stairs are by the locker room," I whispered.
Victor grabbed my wrist suddenly.
His grip was iron, stopping me mid-stride.
"Don't move," he commanded.
"What?"
He brought his flashlight up to the ceiling corner.
Directly above the front desk, hidden inside the smoke detector housing.
A tiny green diode blinked rhythmically.
"That’s just the fire alarm," I said, confused.
Victor didn't reply.
He walked to the desk, stepped onto a chair, and ripped the plastic cover off
the smoke detector with his bare hand.
Wires snapped.
He dropped the unit onto the desk.
Inside the casing sat a high-grade pinhole camera lens.
Connected to a lithium battery pack and a high-frequency transmitter.
Victor’s jaw hardened.
He aimed his flashlight toward the locker room entrance.
Another smoke detector.
He aimed it toward the private changing stalls.
A tiny camera was wedged into the ventilation grille.
"He didn't just want the crash footage, Lena," Victor’s voice sounded like
grinding stones.
"He has been watching you."
My knees buckled.
I grabbed the edge of the front desk to keep from falling.
Every morning I changed clothes here.
Every evening I locked up alone.
Six months of my life, stripped of every shred of privacy.
Adrien had been watching me from his laptop, playing the role of the devoted,
harmless boyfriend.
"He’s a monster," I choked out, tears finally breaking through my composure.
"A sick, pathetic monster."
"He’s worse than that," Victor said, his eyes scanning the room.
"He’s patient."
Victor moved past the desk toward the basement door.
He kicked the flimsy latch open and descended into the dark stairwell.
I followed him, desperate not to be left alone in the main room.
The basement was cool and damp.
The security server sat in an open metal rack in the corner, humming softly.
Victor knelt beside the machine.
His scarred hands moved with practiced speed, disconnecting the power cables and
unscrewing the mounting brackets.
"This is the drive?"
"Yes," I answered, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of Victor's coat.
"Six months of twenty-four-hour continuous recording. It never deletes."
Victor pulled the heavy black drive from the rack.
"Now we have leverage. We take this to the US Attorney's office—"
The hum of the basement lights cut out.
Pitch black.
The heavy metal door at the top of the stairs clicked shut.
The sound of a heavy padlock sliding into place echoed down the concrete steps.
Then, through the metal ventilation pipe overhead, a voice drifted down into the
dark.
"You really shouldn't have brought her here, big brother," Adrien’s voice purred
with sadistic amusement.
May you like
"The local fire department has a ten-minute response time in this rain."
The unmistakable scent of gasoline began to drip down the wooden steps.
