Page 27 of Odin

“I saw the picture of the wall. Is it true?” Lorenzo kept pushing.

"Daddy..." I could sense her irritation. Her voice was cracking, and she leaned forward as if she was going to leap off the bed and strangle him through the phone.

“Is it true? Were you not a virgin?” Lorenzo was persistent when it was his daughter. If he had been the same with his father, some of this bullshit would have already been resolved.

“Yes,” she whispered, finally giving in. “It was months before the wedding.”

“Odin?" I made a noise to let him know I was still here and listening. Squeezing her fingers, I waited. "Name your price, andI'll pay retribution for my daughter's lack of judgement." Fucker. He honestly thought it was consensual. In what dream world was he fucking living in?

“I am not giving her back.” Before I could say anything else, the line went silent, so I took the phone from her and hung up.

Serena turned and looked at me. “He'll believe me, right?” she asked me.

"Right now, he's piecing what he's seen together without all the facts and jumping to the wrong conclusions.” She nodded in agreement and laid her head back on my chest.

***

Icouldn't ignore the incessant dinging of my phone. Mr. De Angelis had sent the Nerds into a frenzy to unwind whatever fucking shit was going down. By the noise coming from my phone, they had been busy.

I opened the first email, and there were several attachments with the camera footage from the penthouse.

There were cameras in every hallway of the building, the elevator, and even one that was inside the foyer between the penthouse and the elevator. “Do you want to see the camera footage?” I asked Serena. She hadn't moved from my chest. Not bothering to answer, she sat up and curled herself into my upper body for a better view of the phone. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and hugged her tight to me. She needed my strength today, and I wouldn’t deny her. Those days were over.

Playing the first clip, we watched as a hooded figure made their way to the elevator from the front lobby.

“Where’s the desk clerk?” Serena pointed to the front lobby desk. Ron was missing. We had specifically chosen him for this assignment. A former Marine, he could still defend himself with the best of them, and I knew he had gone through furtherextensive training. He wasn’t a Deviant, but we had made sure that he would be loyal.

I scrolled the footage back. The desk had been empty before the figure had entered the frame. We watched as they made their way to the elevator and stuck two keys in. Pausing the video, I enlarged it to where we could only see the keys. There was a blue keychain that dangled from the ring. We were the only two people who had a set, and those were clearly Serena’s.

She sat up quickly, knocking the phone out of my hand. “Those are my keys! Odin, how do they have my keys?” Serena was screeching at me while pointing at the phone in my lap.

"Hey." I tried to calm her down as she ran her fingers through her hair. "Hey, it's okay. Go check. Do you have them?” She immediately went to her purse on the small table in the suite’s bedroom.

“I have them. They’re right here.” She pulled the keys from her purse and came back to sit on the bed next to me. Her eyes were wide, and she kept glancing at the keys as if they could walk on their own.

“Alright, you had them when you left for the luncheon because I was already gone. The guards would have needed to be let up to escort you down.” She nodded as she fiddled with the keys in her hand.

“I had them the whole day. They were in my purse, and I keyed the elevator when we came back. I hadn’t pulled them out of the lock when the guards told me not to move from the elevator.” She looked at me, and her eyes were wide. Her lips parted. I stole a quick kiss from her.

"It's going to be alright," I told her. “It had to be the luncheon. Did you leave your purse anywhere?” I asked her. The luncheon had been the source of most of our problems today. I'd always support Serena, but if she hated the luncheons as much as I did for her, they were gone. She didn't need that bullshit in her life,and there were other clubs or charities she could join if it was that important.

“No, it was with me the whole time.” She put her hands over her face and shook her hair out as a curtain. I didn’t blame her for the break-in, but I wasn't letting her hide from it, either. Gently grabbing her wrists, I placed them in her lap and didn't let go.

“Plated lunch, right?”

“Yes, and we had assigned seats, so I set my purse down by my feet and never got up.”

“Did any of the women get up from the table?”

“Of course they did." She looked at me as if I was nuts to suggest they wouldn't. "It was three hours of mingling and speeches. When it gets to be too boring, you excuse yourself to the restroom. Standard practice.”

"Seriously?" I asked, raising my eyebrow at the notion. If it got to be too much, there was a much better solution. Fucking leave.

"Seriously! You saw those women; they're waiting for their next hot take, and sometimes, you just have to escape to regroup."

I tried to remember the women sitting at Serena's table. Mrs. De Luca had been sitting across from Serena, but she'd only been interested in the local gossip and me, when I'd arrived. Mrs. Moretti had been next to Serena, but her purse would have been on the opposite side, closer to her mother. “Did your mother use the restroom?”

She stopped, and I watched the planes of her face shift as she thought about it. “Yes, but she wasn’t gone long. Mrs. Moretti teased her because she went so early. We hadn't even been there twenty minutes."

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