Page 2 of Mine Again
No, my little butterfly is a night owl, usually tapping away on her keyboard, trading crypto. She’s good at it too, and enormous pride swells in my chest at how clever my girl is. She missed a few steps to keep her identity safe, but I made sure she can’t be traced and trades as anonymously as possible.
I switch the camera to night vision.
No one is in the bed.
The sheets are untouched.
My eyes narrow, and I sit up straighter.
Where the hell is she?
My littlefarfalla’sdaily routine is as predictable as the sun rising. It hasn’t changed in years. Even after the death of her father ten and a half weeks ago, she stuck to it. Though I could tell she’d been testing the limits, stretching her wings a little more.
Dinner is served at the Accardi household at precisely six o’clock. Afterward, my girl spends an hour with her family in the library. Her father never joined her mother and sisters when he was alive, but the siblings always played a round of cards while their mother read and supervised them from her chair in the corner.
At precisely eight o’clock, they all go to their rooms.
I glance at my watch. Maybe it’s jet lag, and I miscalculated the time.
But no. I don’t make mistakes when it comes toher.
It’s one in the afternoon here in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Italy is nine hours ahead. That makes it ten at night.
I switch to the library feed, but as expected, the room is dark.
Is she with one of her sisters?
I check the hidden cameras I placed throughout the house six years ago. They’re outdated now. Better ones exist, but I can only work with what’s already in place. The security system her father installed only covers the outside perimeter.
The whole house is eerily quiet. It usually is at this hour, but tonight, something isn’t right.
My gut churns, the unease gnawing at me. I rap my fingers impatiently against the hard surface of my desk, the rhythm a futile attempt to calm the growing sense of dread.
I wish I had placed cameras in her sisters’ bedrooms. That would have made this easier. But that was a line I hadn’t wanted to cross.
Come on,farfalla, show yourself.
I should’ve implanted a tracker in her. Life would be so much simpler. But six years ago, when I wired the house with cameras, I hadn’t thought it necessary. And my departure a year later had been too sudden to prepare for this.
I retrieve the footage from her bedroom, starting with the day I left for Brazil.
Her image flickers to life, my first glimpse of her in four long weeks, and for a moment, I forget everything else.
It’s my favorite angle of her.
Fuck, she’s so damn beautiful.
She’s sitting on her bed, typing on her laptop. She bites her lip, deep in thought. Reaching up, she brushes a curl of dark hair from her face.
It’s been getting longer. She must have missed her last haircut, probably because her father isn’t there anymore to regiment every aspect of his family’s life.
Her tongue darts out, swiping across her plump bottom lip, and my cock reacts instantly.
Dammit.
I press my palm over my growing erection, my eyes sticking to her exposed cleavage as it rises with each breath.
It’s a struggle to force my gaze away. I can’t get distracted.
