17 Chapter 16

Surveillance tapes?

How the hell did I forget about the surveillance cameras?

I watched Xander, head computer geek and others bring down computers and other gadgets. They plugged their equipments into the large plasma screen, then proceeded to connect to the mainframe.

I watched as they scanned the videos saved in the mainframe and singled out all the videos that were recorded on tuesday, the day I left with Ophelia.

All I could think about was 'This is it, I'm going to die' 'Its official, I'm going to die' 'I'm going to die!'

It wasn't like I didn't know it was going to happen, I knew something terrible was going to happen today, I just didn't expect my life to end this way. The worst part of it was, the security cameras were able to record audio. I was definitely going to die.

They played a video. It showed Ophelia running towards the mansion, taking a break, walking, collapsing at the front door, talking to Nicholas, walking into her room, running out of her room towards her father's office...

"This is a waste of time, fast forward it to the time they got back." Antonio barked.

Xander did as he said, fast forwarding all video feeds. When he stopped, he singled out a feed that showed a car pulling into the driveway. I recognized the car immediately, it was the one we left with when we went to the wedding shop. Minutes later, Nicholas exited the car, the video showed Ophelia and I talking in the car. Thankfully, we weren't close to the security camera so it couldn't record our conversation.

It showed me leaving the car, after a few minutes Ophelia left the car too.

"Bring up feeds for both of them." Antonio said.

After tapping and clicking his computer for a few seconds, Xander brought up two video recordings of me and Ophelia playing simultaneously.

My feed showed me walking to Antonio's office and going in, Ophelia's showed her going into her room.

After a few minutes, I came out of Antonio's office and walked down the corridor. I knew what was going to come up next, it was our meeting in the garden and I knew what was going to happen next after that video ended.

I placed my hand over my face. I couldn't watch but I had to peek, the tension in the air was so agonizing.

Then something happened.

I saw myself move down the corridor to my room.

What the hell? I never went to my room before going to the garden? Was this some sort of miracle?

I sat up straight watching. Maybe it slipped my mind, maybe I did go to my room before going to the garden.

What happened a few minutes later made me clean my eyes twice.

I dragged a suitcase out of my room, dropped it in front of my door, walked back to Antonio's office, walked out, picked my suitcase and walked down to the corridor.

"Follow him."

Xander pulled up video feeds from the many cameras in the mansion, singling out the ones that had me in it as I walked down the corridor, it showed as I stopped and talked to different mob members as I made my way to the parking lot, then I got in my car and zoomed off.

While all these were happening Ophelia's feed remained inactive. Apart from the guards standing in the corridor, there was no other movement.

If Ophelia wasn't with me for the past few days, I would have thought I imagined the meeting in the garden.

Or was this some sort of trick on the part of Antonio? Was he trying to gauge my reaction? Or did he just want to drive me crazy?

I didn't know what to believe anymore, myself or the video?

Antonio stared intently at the screen. He seemed to know something was off.

"Play that video again."

Xander did as the boss said but this time he zoomed in, so that only my video feed occupied the large screen.

I watched with rapt attention as my frame moved from feed to feed, I observed and processed every action that took place on the screen.

And that's when I saw it.

It was so infinitesimal that it could be easily disregarded, overlooked. If I wasn't watching closely, I would have missed it too. I sneaked a peek at Antonio, he was watching the video but I don't think he noticed the slight pause in my action, in my walk before I entered my room.

I relaxed into my chair and began to think. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. For a live video feed, that pause or minute cut could mean only one thing, the video was edited. But who could have done it?

When my focus landed on the screen it showed my car zooming off.

"Xander, could you pull up Ophelia's video feed again." I asked. Even though it would get me into trouble, I needed to confirm something.

"Isn't that just a waste of time? There is nothing on it." He replied.

"Do as he says, I want to see the front part of the mansion, specifically Ophelia's balcony. While we're all concerned about what happened inside, there is a possibility she climbed out her balcony to leave the house."

I huffed.

Jumping from the balcony was a suicide attempt, it was too high. Surely Antonio didn't think his daughter was senseless, although people did stupid things in desperate situations.

Two videos played on the screen, one from the hallway and the other from an angle that overlooked the balcony.

I was interested in the video that showed the hallway. I watched as Ophelia entered her room. A few minutes later, I noticed another infinitesimal pause in the video. This confirmed my earlier presumption that the video was tampered with because the part where Ophelia should have walked out of her room and gone to the garden was cut off.

Why that clever little...Ophelia's signature was all over this. She must have messed up the security footages before we left, or gotten someone to do it for her.

I was going to give her a good tongue lashing whenever I got hold of her. She should have told me, what if I had raised an alarm when I noticed the error in the videos?

I sighed and relaxed into my chair, I was off the hook, for now.

Antonio told Xander to play more tapes from different locations in and out of the mansion.

The next video that came up on the screen, showed Antonio knocking on his daughter's door, when he received no answer he left and retired to his room. The next day, he knocked again but still didn't receive any reply, he told Raymond to get the master key. He opened the room and found it empty, that's when all hell broke loose, he barked orders at those standing around to search the whole house and find Ophelia, men scurried away in fear and the other feeds showed men moving around the house.

After a long, very long while Antonio buried his face in his hands. The search was unproductive and fruitless, it was just a waste of time because every vital and important clue had been wiped off the system, including the meeting in the garden.

"Dio mio." He lamented.

I felt pity for the man but he brought it upon himself. He should know how hard headed his daughter was, she had inherited the stubbornness from him, you couldn't force her to do what she didn't want.

Half of the pack were already asleep on their chairs.

I chuckled.

'...Learn to observe facts and act on them.'

Remembering Ophelia's words, I laughed louder.

Everyone looked at me, startled. Well, not everyone, only those whom were awake. The eyes Antonio used to look at me could freeze the Atlantic Ocean. I should have stopped laughing immediately but it was too late to stop now.

"Please do tell us Luke, what you find so funny in this situation?"

"Your daughter just played us."

"I am well aware of that." His voice was dangerously low.

A warning. One wrong word, bullet in head.

"Well, its very obvious she has been in this house the whole time." I continued, unfazed.

"In case you haven't noticed, we've searched every single room in this house and she is nowhere to be found. Where else could she be?!" Veins popped out of his neck as he tried to reign in his anger.

"The panic room." I leaned back into my chair, playing it cool. I looked at him pointedly, passing a clear message that we knew how she could have accessed it without showing up on the cameras. Antonio's house was like a castle, it included all the secret passages and entrances that royalty employed to escape when there was immanent danger. Only three people knew about those passages, Antonio, Ophelia and I.

"I mean think about it boss, the panic room doesn't have surveillance cameras, it has enough food to sustain somebody for more than a week and most importantly CCTV that overlooks everything in the house." I waited for him to process what I was saying. "Everyone, I mean every single person has been up here since the incident started, giving Ophelia enough time to sneak away undetected as the guest were leaving."

Realization set in. He held his head like it was about to fall off his neck.

"You knew about this and you made us waste time watching the stupid surveillance tapes?"

I raised my hands in surrender. "I swear boss, I had no idea. I just thought about the possibility."

"We'll continue this, tomorrow. When I know everyone can think clearly." He stood up and left the room.

I was the next to leave, freeing the mob members to retire to their rooms.

I was officially off the hook, it was really simple.

I walked to my room and unlocked the door, it was just the way I left it, messy in my haste to pack up.

I showered, wore my PJs and climbed into bed. It was 12:46am.

After some minutes of thinking about today's event and rolling from one side to another, I became restless. I got up from bed and looked around the room to make sure I was alone. Then I picked my phone and called Ophelia.

The phone rang for a very long time and was about to disconnect when she picked up before the last ring.

"Luke?" She spoke with a sleep filled voice.

I breathed a sigh of relief, at least she was okay. Then I remembered the footage.

"You little minx!"

She chuckled sleepily, she knew what I was talking about.

"What?" She asked innocently.

"Why didn't you tell me anything about it?!" I did my best to keep my voice down.

"Did you honestly think I was that stupid? That I would make a plan without having any form of back up? They don't call me Antonio's daughter for nothing you know."

Yes. I see that now.

"Who did you sway to help you? And how many people know about your whereabouts?"

"Nobody Luke, honestly speaking and I intend to keep it that way."

"There's no possible way Ophelia, the time frame was just too small, how'd you get Xander and the others out of the way."

"There was enough time for me to do what I wanted to do. I couldn't delete the feed because it would arouse suspicion so I pulled and twisted little strings to alter the video." I could hear her soft breathing on the phone, she must have put it on hands free and kept it close to her face, her nostrils specifically.

"Ophelia?" That was a warning, I wanted her to tell me everything.

"Forget it Luke, true magicians never reveal their secrets. The only thing I'm going to tell you is that I admit to messing up the security footage and I did it on my own."

I became silent.

"Luke? Are you still there?" She asked after a few minutes.

"I'm right here, princess."

"Its like one in the morning, why are you still up?"

"We just finished an important family meeting." Then I told her how everything went down.

She sighed deeply.

"If what you're telling me is true, then tomorrow is going to be a really hectic day."

"Sure will be."

"So, I'm guessing you skipped dinner?"

"Yes, you?"

"I had something light."

"Good."

The line fell silent, I could only hear the sound of her breathing.

She yawned. "Luke, I'm really sleepy."

"You can go to sleep, princess but don't end the call, I want to hear you fall asleep."

"Okay?" She yawned again but she didn't argue at my odd request.

I heard the mattress groan as she turned to her side and placed the phone close to her.

I put my phone on hands free and placed it close to me. I listened to the sound of her breathing, as it deepened and evened out. Listening to her breathing was the closest thing to sleeping close to her.

It took a while but I eventually fell asleep.

_____________________

January 31st, 2016

I woke up to the feeling of banging on my head, what a horrible headache. Wait, the banging was on my door.

I groaned as I rolled to my side. "Its open!"

Nicholas walked into my room in his PJs.

I checked the time, it was 8:17. "Can't a man get some sleep around here?" I asked him.

"Sorry to disturb you, Luke but Antonio wants to talk to us this morning. Conference room 4."

Conference room 4? It was only used when he wanted to talk to a few people, I was really curious as to who would be joining us.

"So let me get this straight, you left your room and walked all the way down to my room to tell me Antonio wants me present in a meeting. I think that's why they invented these."

I waved my phone in front of him.

He rolled his eyes at me but stopped midway when he realized what he was doing.

"I called your line more than 10 times all I got was that beeping sound that notified me that you were busy on another call."

What the...

I checked my phone and sure enough my phone was still connected to Ophelia's, I guess she wasn't wake yet. I disconnected the call.

"How much time do I have?"

"30 minutes."

I nodded. He left the room.

I lay back on my bed, closed my eyes and asked God to give me the strength to tackle whatever obstacle that I would have to face today. I jumped out of bed to conduct my daily routine.

_______

I walked into the conference room 30 minutes later and took my designated seat as underboss. I scanned the room and noted the other people present in the meeting, Nicholas, Alex, Victor, Raymond and the boss. This was really an intimate meeting.

"I don't want to waste anymore time. We have a situation and a deadline, Luke I want a quick list of things we need to do to locate a missing person. We need to find Ophelia immediately."

"Raymond, I need a briefing."

While Raymond recollected everything that happened from the beginning of the week until now, I started my list. We were still in square one, without any progress of finding Ophelia.

By the time Raymond finished and Antonio turned to me, I was through with my list.

I cleared my throat. "First of all, we've got to wait three days before considering the person missing." I looked around the room. "Apparently, Ophelia has been gone for a week. So basically she is missing, so we check that." I put a little '√' sign on my notepad for item number one.

"Then we file a missing person report..."

"We aren't filing anything, I don't want the police involved in this. We find Ophelia ourselves." Antonio spoke up.

I put a little '×' sign close to item number two.

"Three, Put posters out..."

Antonio huffed. "We're looking for my daughter, not trying to publicize the fact that I have one. No posters."

I crossed item number three off my list, so far we had come up with nothing solid.

"Four, we contact family and friends. I think we've cleared the family side since you don't know where she is." I referred to Antonio. "And that leaves only me as the friend. Since I have no idea where she is, I should cross that off the list, right boss?"

The sudden silence in the room told me Antonio still had doubts about me. I kept my head down, eyes fixated on my notepad.

'...don't lose eye contact with my father, it shows you're not intimidated or afraid.'

I couldn't show that I was intimidated, after all I had survived last night. I had come too far to fuck this up now.

I raised my face so I could maintain eye contact with him. "Right, boss?"

He stared at me intently for 30 seconds, I stared back at him with unwavering eyes. I even added some drama to the staring contest, I raised my eyebrow silently daring him to confront me. I shouldn't have, but I did. I didn't want Antonio to have anymore doubts about my stand in this matter, he needs to believe the fact that I don't know where his daughter is.

After one full minute of observing me, he gave a brisk nod.

I lowered my head back to my notepad, thankful that my little show of defiance saved my ass.

I opened my mouth to speak again before Antonio interrupted me.

"What about Tory?"

"Tory?"

"Yes, Victoria. She's Ophelia's friend too, isn't she? We should contact her to see if she knows something." He turned to Raymond. "I want to speak to Victoria Parkinson as soon as possible."

He turned back to me and gave a small nod, a sign that he wanted me to continue.

"Five, Check regularly visited places." I made eye contact with everyone in the room. "I'm talking about spas, shopping malls, restaurants, clubs, hotels, anywhere she..."

"I don't care if we have to look under every rock in all of Italy, I want to find Ophelia before Friday. Nicholas, you drive Ophelia around when she doesn't go with her cars, you know where she stops by before she moved to London. Call Michael Webb, I need all her cards checked, that'll give us a detailed list of other places we don't know about."

He turned to me. "Luke, come with me."

He stood up from his chair, I followed suit. We left the conference room and walked down the corridor, we stopped in front of Ophelia's door. I was really confused now, why were we here?

He fished out the master key card from his pocket and swiped it. He opened the door, got in and held it open for me to come in.

I walked inside and was surrounded by the familiar fragrance of Jasmine. As usual, Ophelia's room was tidy and pristine, there was nothing out of place.

"This is the last alternative, since you say you don't know where she is, I was hoping we could look around her things and see if she left a clue as to where she might be."

Ophelia, for both our sake I hope you didn't leave anything.

We walked into her large closet first, everything was in order, jeans, T-shirt were neatly folded. While formal wear and dinner gowns hung on hangers, she even arranged them according to the colours of the rainbow. There was no sign of hurried packing, it's not like she packed anything to come with me.

After minutes of searching and finding nothing important, he walked out and sat on her bed. He looked around the room and his eyes landed on the beside table where Ophelia kept all her gadgets: phone, tablet, iPod, laptop. He moved closer, picked Ophelia's phone and turned it on, the screen lit up. After a few minutes of booting it showed him the home screen, no encryption, no password, no security feature, no app lock. He started searching.

Strange. It was just to easy too access her phone. I sighed, she planned this one too.

While he searched her phone and other gadgets, I busied myself looking for any clue that might point to the fact that Ophelia was at my house and destroy it. I also looked around for clues that would lead them on a wild goose chase until Ophelia was ready to surface again.

I searched for hours and came up with nothing. The only thing I found was a discarded dress covered in blood. When I examined it, I remembered it was the dress Ophelia wore when we went to the wedding shop. Her little panic attack had ruined the dress.

When I looked to Antonio the expression on his face was one of utter defeat. I knew immediately he had found nothing of value.

I joined him, sitting on the bed. "We'll find her." I tried to reassure him, giving him false hope.

He nodded. "We should go see the boys, let's see how much progress they've made.

We left Ophelia's room and walked back to the conference room.

Nicholas submitted the list of places he assumed Ophelia could be hiding to Antonio. Thankfully my address wasn't on it.

We spent the rest of the day assigning posts and different locations amongst ourselves. Starting tomorrow we would commence 'Operation Find Ophelia.'

I had finished eating dinner when I hit the call button on my phone. It rang for a few seconds before Ophelia picked on the third ring. It took a while for her face to come into focus, when it did her face lit up instantly when she recognised me.

"Luke!"

Her happiness was contagious and I smiled back at her. "Hey, princess."

"For a second I thought it was dad calling."

I understood her worry. Today I decided to video call instead of voice calling.

The screen was covered in a cloud of smoke, then I heard coughing in the background.

"Ophelia, what are you doing?"

She was still coughing. "Cooking. And I'm afraid I made it too spicy."

She picked the phone making the images become blurred and unfocused. When it finally comes into focus she's sitting on the dining table with a steaming bowl in front of her.

She starts eating and instantly reminded me of a segment in Talking Ginger 3 called 'eat with me'. It was too cute.

"So, what's up?" She asked

I give her a brief rundown of everything that happened today and our plan for the week.

"Wow. Good luck finding me." She joked.

A stray piece of her hair had escaped from her ponytail, I reached out to tuck it in. I became aware of the distance between us when my hand couldn't penetrate my screen.

She unconsciously tucked it behind her ear unaware of what had happened.

We talked for a long time until she became tired and sleepy. I had to let her go.

I turned to my side and put off my lamp.

___________________

February 1st, 2016.

Monday morning. Day one of 'Operation Find Ophelia'. Guess who gets stuck with scouring the lingerie shop for information with the two most annoying boys in the world.

Me.

I stood outside the store, hesitating. It was either this or finding Ophelia at my house and killing me. I made up my mind and walked in, the boys behind me.

The sight of half-naked women greeted me as I stepped into the shop. Commotion spread in the next second when the women realised males were in the room. They tried desperately to cover their essentials but it was too late, the images were already ingrained in my memory. No amount of hitting my head on a wall would get it out.

I put my hand over my eyes and turned around, showing them I had modesty. The boys on the other hand did no such thing, instead they wolf whistled and cheered, earning them some very colourful words and a few shoes thrown at them.

The proprietor who knew me walked in and saved the day. She apologised to the ladies and led us to her office.

Inside, we explained the rationale behind our visit, we wanted to know if Ophelia had come her last week to make some purchases. She sympathised with us, checked her logs on her system and gave us the exact date Ophelia last came shopping. I wrote the date down in my notepad. Not that it would help but I needed to present something to Antonio.

As we were leaving, we received death glares from the women. They were fully clothed now.

We went to the next location on our list.

_______________

February 4th, 2016.

We played cop for the next three days, each day submitting our reports to Antonio.

Today, being Thursday was worse than all the other days combined together.

We went to a traditional, relaxation home in Maremma, Tuscany, which was a little too close for comfort for me. I shifted in my seat throughout the whole drive there. It was a place where people walked around in robes, drank herbal tea, submerged themselves in hot springs and listened to traditional shit about health all day. When we got there, we explained to the old man, who owned the place the reason for our sudden visit. He sympathized with us and kindly explained to us that the place had no technology so it was impossible to conduct a speedy search and confirm if she was here but we could search for her name manually in their logs. Seeing we had no other choice we obliged. He handed us a dusty leather bound book that was the same weight as the 10 pound dumbbell I exercised with.

I opened the book and released dust particles that caused the boys to sneeze uncontrollably. I didn't sneeze but the dust tickled my nostrils.

We went through the first page painstakingly, deciphering the words that were scrawled out horribly on the page. Sometimes we went through a more than once to confirm the name wasn't there.

After eight hours of sitting in one position, our buttocks and backs were stiff, we also had cricks in our necks from moving it side to side but we finally made it to the last page and Ophelia's name wasn't there.

We called the attention of the old man. When he got to us he squinted at the book, he bent closer as if to confirm what he was seeing. Then finally he said in a rickety voice. "I'm sorry, boys but I seem to have given you the wrong book. This one is over 200 years old. Let me get you a new one."

The boys used all the strength they had to restrain me because I was about to throttle the neck of that old man.

Eight hours! Eight freaking hours! Just going over the names of dead people.

We left eventually but it was after I realised Ophelia wouldn't come to a place like this, it wasn't her style. I figured she must have used her card to pay for someone else.

I was in the garden now, thinking of all the places we went to without success. Even Nicholas and Raymond couldn't make any solid progress, which was a good thing.

17:54.

"Luke!" Somebody called my name.

I turned around to see Tory running towards me.

"Tory?" I stood up to meet her, surprised to see her.

When she walked up to me she was breathing hard. She put her hands around me to give me a hug but in the end she was only able to grip my forearms because her huge stomach got in the way. I helped her sit on the bench. It had been a long time since I'd seen Victoria. She was always in the mansion when we were kids, she was practically a member of the family, until her mother had to move to New York. She still wore her curly blonde hair short and still had those freckles peppered all over her nose and cheeks.

"Tory, what's up, what are you doing here?"

"I got a call from Antonio, when I heard Ophelia was missing for about a week and you had no idea where she was, I got a plane ticket and rushed down here. I also came to give her a good beating for not telling me about the wedding and letting me design her wedding dress."

I looked at her protruding belly. "In your condition? You should stop putting yourself under pressure and I'm sure you're limited to travelling long distances."

"Stop fussing over my condition, I'm fine." She placed her hand on her tummy. "Is it true you don't know where Ophelia is?" She asked, regarding me with those intense metallic blue eyes of hers.

I nodded.

She studied me for sometime. "Well, wherever she is I hope she doesn't get bugged by men, especially the good-for-nothing ones." She thought wistfully.

I huffed. "That is very unlikely, there's nobody living within a mile radius of where she is, talk less of men..."

I wasn't supposed to say that!

"Fuck."

"I knew it! I just knew it! You had to know!" She squealed.

"Keep your voice down, Tory!" I whisper yelled, looking around to certify that no one was within hearing distance.

"You! You know!" She was jumping from side to side on the bench.

"Victoria!" I snapped. Warning.

She stopped screaming but couldn't stop smiling. "Tell me Luke, where is she?"

I shook my head from side to side, furiously.

"Come on..." She pleaded.

"No!"

"Oh please, oh please, oh please..." She was whining now.

Five days, I had survived five days with some of the ruthless men in all of Italy, five days without revealing Ophelia's location. Now I had spent only five minutes with a woman who couldn't even hurt a fly and I had spilled the beans about part of her location.

Women were cunning little creatures.

I needed to distract her fast before she squeezed more information out of me.

Her protruding tummy was the distraction I was looking for. I placed my hand on it.

She put her hand over mine, keeping it in place. "Wanna feel the baby move?" She asked.

Mission accomplished.

"He's really energetic, though he doesn't swoop around anymore, now he just twists and turns."

I felt a small bump against my palm.

"There, did you feel that?" She asked.

I nodded. Few seconds later, I felt another bump against my palm, then I felt the baby move to the left, away from my palm.

Tory laughed, I smiled.

"He's very shy, he doesn't like strangers." She rubbed her tummy.

"Tory, I've always wanted to ask..."

She turned her face away, already aware of the question.

I felt like I had hit a sensitive spot, I felt bad, I shouldn't have asked.