Chapter 81: He Knew

Olivia’s POV

​I froze, my mind struggling to connect the dots as I stared at Lucas sitting on my bed.

Thank you?

"What do you mean, thank you?" I whispered, keeping my voice low so the guards outside my door wouldn’t hear.

Lucas didn’t respond. He simply continued staring at me, his expression unreadable.

"Alpha Lucas, you have to leave," I whispered urgently. "Lucian has me grounded. If he finds you in my room at this time of night, he will literally kill both of us."

Lucas didn’t look bothered at all. Instead of getting up, he leaned closer. "We can’t talk here," he said quietly.

"Then leave," I whispered sharply. "This is the worst possible time for you to be here."

Before I could say anything else, Lucas reached out and grabbed my arm. The world spun around me, the air shifted violently, and my stomach dropped as we vanished from my bedroom. When the dizziness finally cleared, I found myself sitting on the edge of another large mattress. I looked around in shock before realizing exactly where he had brought me.

Lucas’s private room.

I was sitting on his bed in almost the exact same position I had been sitting on mine seconds ago.

I scrambled backward on the sheets, my forehead creasing into a deep frown. "Are you out of your mind? Teleporting me into your room? What is wrong with you?"

Lucas didn’t waste time with his usual playful banter. The seriousness on his face immediately told me that whatever he had come to tell me wasn’t something he found funny.

"The head of the security technical team is my friend," Lucas revealed, watching my reaction closely.

I stopped moving. "What?"

"First, our kiss in the garden," Lucas continued. "He removed that footage days ago, long before tonight. In fact, every conversation you’ve had with me anywhere near a camera has been deleted. None of it stays on those servers."

For a moment, I could only stare at him. My eyes widened as my breath caught in my throat, and suddenly, everything began falling into place. The garden. The kiss. All those times Lucas and I had spoken around the packhouse. That was why Lucian’s security team hadn’t found anything.

Lucas had known about the cameras all along.

"You’ve been deleting footage of us?" I asked, still struggling to believe what I was hearing.

"Not me personally," Lucas replied. "But yes. I made sure nothing involving the two of us stayed there long enough to become a problem."

I stared at him in disbelief. "Lucas, do you realize what Lucian would do if he found out?"

"I know exactly what my brother would do," Lucas replied calmly. "That’s why he isn’t going to find out."

That answer did absolutely nothing to calm me. If anything, his confidence made me more nervous because he was talking about interfering with the security system of an Alpha who happened to be his own brother as though it were nothing.

Lucas stepped closer to the bed and crossed his arms over his chest. "Then tonight, when Lucian ordered that search, my friend contacted me directly. He told me Lucian had ordered them to search through two months of footage using facial recognition. Your face and another man’s."

My stomach tightened at the mention of Owen, and judging by the way Lucas’s eyes immediately sharpened, he noticed my reaction.

"He knew Lucian wanted the results quickly, so he contacted me before submitting the report," Lucas continued. "I told him that if there was any footage of you with that man, I wanted to know about it first."

I swallowed hard. "And?"

"There was."

My blood ran cold.

"The clinic," I whispered.

Lucas’s eyes narrowed slightly. "So you remember."

Of course I remembered. I had spent nearly forty minutes sitting in Lucian’s bedroom, praying that exact footage wouldn’t be found. I had imagined every possible outcome if Lucian saw Owen and me together, and none of them ended well for me.

"What happened to it?" I asked.

"It’s gone," Lucas answered. "He deleted it before the final report was sent to Lucian."

For several seconds, I couldn’t speak. Lucas had saved me. He had erased the footage of Owen at the clinic, he had erased our garden kiss weeks ago, and without me even knowing it, he had been the reason I survived Lucian’s investigation tonight.

But the relief didn’t last long because another thought immediately followed it.

"What if Lucian finds out that footage has been deleted?" I asked, my voice tightening again. "Lucas, this isn’t some small thing. You interfered with his security system. You made someone working for him hide information from him. If Lucian discovers what happened, you could get that man into serious trouble."

"He knew the risk when he agreed to help me."

I stared at Lucas, unable to decide whether I wanted to thank him or yell at him. Probably both. But before I could do either, something else he had said registered in my mind.

"I wanted to know about it first."

My eyes slowly narrowed. "Wait. You said he showed you the footage before deleting it?"

Lucas went quiet for a moment before nodding.

My stomach dropped again. "So you saw Owen and me?"

"Yes."

Wonderful.

Apparently, surviving Lucian’s investigation didn’t mean I was actually safe. It only meant the interrogation had changed Alphas.

Lucas moved closer until he was standing directly in front of me. "Which brings me to the reason I brought you here."

I looked up at him, and the seriousness in his expression made the small amount of relief I had been feeling disappear completely.

"So now tell me," Lucas said, his eyes searching my face. "Is Owen really your lover?"

I froze.

"Because from what I saw in that footage, the two of you didn’t look like lovers. You looked like you were arguing." His gaze remained fixed on me as he continued. "He came to you near the clinic. You didn’t look happy to see him, and you definitely didn’t look comfortable around him. Then tonight, Lucian finds you secretly giving the same man thirty thousand dollars."

I said nothing, but my fingers tightened against the bedsheet beneath me. Lucas’s eyes dropped briefly to my hand before returning to my face, and I knew he had noticed.

"Annabel," he said quietly, taking another step toward me. "What does that man have on you?"

My heart stopped.

For the second time that night, I found myself trapped in a room with an Alpha asking me the one question I couldn’t answer.