Alaric

"Can you send this footage to me?"I requested.

The younger guard looked startled immediately.

"I... I do not think we are allowed to do that, sir."

"I need it," I answered instantly.

The older guard frowned slightly.

"These recordings are private."

I dragged a frustrated hand through my hair before forcing myself to calm down slightly.

"I understand," I said carefully. "But this footage involves me directly."

The guards still looked hesitant.

My chest tightened painfully again while I looked back toward the monitor showing myself sitting completely alone inside my car.

That image alone made me feel sick.

I looked back toward them again.

"Please," I said more quietly this time. "I just need to understand what I am looking at."

Something in my voice must have affected them because both guards visibly softened slightly afterward.

The older man sighed heavily before nodding once.

"We can transfer the footage from the exterior cameras only," he said carefully. "But it cannot leave your possession."

Relief mixed painfully with anxiety inside my chest.

"That is fine."

The younger guard finally nodded before beginning the transfer.

I remained standing there silently while the footage copied slowly onto a flash drive.

My eyes kept drifting back toward the monitor over and over again, toward the horrifying image of the empty passenger seat and toward the footage showing me sitting completely alone inside the car while talking to someone who was not there.

No matter how many times I replayed the recording inside my head or stared at the screen searching for some kind of mistake, I still could not understand what I was seeing.

After several painfully long minutes, the younger security officer finally removed the flash drive from the computer before walking toward me quietly.

"Sir," the younger guard called carefully.

I blinked once before finally tearing my gaze away from the monitor.

He held the flash drive out toward me politely. "The transfer is complete."

For a moment, I simply stared down at the small device resting in his palm. It felt ridiculous that something so tiny suddenly carried enough information to completely destroy my understanding of reality.

My throat tightened slightly before I finally reached forward and took it from him.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

The older guard gave me a small nod. "Please drive safely, sir."

I forced myself to nod back before turning toward the door.

The walk back through the building felt strangely unreal afterward. My footsteps echoed softly against the marble floors while people passed me quietly through the hallways, but none of it properly registered inside my head anymore.

All I could think about was the footage.

The empty passenger seat.

The way I had smiled and spoken to nobody.

The moment I finally stepped outside, cold Monaco air immediately brushed against my skin. The cloudy sky stretched endlessly above the cliffs while distant waves crashed softly somewhere below the property.

I inhaled slowly before walking back toward my car.

The moment I sat inside the driver’s seat, I immediately plugged the flash drive into the screen beside me.

Then I played the footage again.

And again.

And again.

Each replay made my chest tighten harder.

I kept searching desperately for something different each time. Some small detail I missed earlier. A reflection in the window. A shadow. A movement from the passenger seat. Anything that proved Harold had truly been there with me.

But every single replay showed the exact same horrifying thing.

I was alone.

At one point, I paused the footage completely and leaned closer toward the screen, staring so hard at the passenger seat that my eyes actually started hurting.

There was nothing, no sigh of harold, no movement and no proof that he had ever been there at all.

A frustrated breath escaped me as I leaned back against the seat and dragged both hands down my face.

None of this made any sense to me no matter how hard I tried piecing everything together inside my head. Harold was real. He had to be real. There was simply no other explanation because I remembered him too clearly for him to be imaginary.

I remembered his voice, his laugh, the sarcastic comments he made whenever I irritated him, and the countless conversations we had shared over the years. I remembered him sitting beside me after the accident when I could barely sleep through the nightmares. I remembered him staying with me during the worst moments of my life when everybody else seemed afraid of saying the wrong thing around me.

Those memories felt too vivid and too real to be fake, and the thought that all of it might somehow exist only inside my own head terrified me far more than I was willing to admit.

So how could this footage exist?

I eventually forced myself to start the engine again, but even after leaving the property behind, my thoughts remained trapped there.

The drive through Monaco passed in a blur afterward.

Luxury cars moved through the streets around me while tourists crowded the sidewalks near the coastline, but I barely noticed any of it.

My mind kept replaying the footage over and over again no matter how hard I tried focusing on something else.

By the time I reached the hotel where I was supposed to pick Dami up for dinner at my family’s house, my headache had already started returning.

I parked outside the entrance quietly before leaning back against the seat with a slow exhale.

A few minutes later, the passenger door suddenly opened.

"Finally," Dami groaned dramatically while climbing inside the car. "Do you know how long I have been waiting downstairs? I was starting to think you abandoned me."

Normally I would have laughed immediately.

Today I barely reacted.

Dami paused halfway through fastening his seatbelt before slowly turning toward me.

"You look terrible," he said bluntly.

I stared ahead at the road silently for a few seconds before tightening my grip slightly against the steering wheel.

Then finally, without looking at him, I spoke quietly.

"Dami..."

"Hmm?"

"Do you know anybody called Harold?"