Christian POV

In those first few days, even weeks after he'd found Ana on her bathroom floor, Christian had replayed the events in his head often. Too often. So often, that it had brought back nightmares he'd long since stopped having, not since his teenage years. For about a week he had them every night, sometimes multiple times a night. Sometimes it was his birth mother on the floor of the dirty apartment they'd shared when he was so young. Sometimes it was Ana, still and cold on the floor of her bathroom. Sometimes it was a confusing combination of the two. But when he'd wake up in a cold sweat in his own bed, it inevitably incited hours of lying awake, his mind drifting off to them both, thinking about the little he knew of the life his birth mother lived, and thinking of Ana and all she'd been through.

But Ana by far occupied the most time in his brain. There was nothing he could have done from the ages of zero to four to help save his birth mother. But Ana, he'd done everything he could, short of kidnapping her and forcefully keeping her from Kennedy, to help her. And even with everything he'd put into play, things had still gone horribly wrong.

Like Luke Sawyer.

He'd been put in place to keep her safe. When the dust had settled and Ana was awake and safe, Christian had unleashed his fury upon the man who had been tasked with keeping Kennedy away from her, yet hadn't done it. Part of him was legitimately livid at the CPO, but part of him knew he was just a convenient outlet for Christian's overwrought emotions at the time.

But Taylor, as always, had quickly and calmly set him straight. Ana had been on covert, light surveillance. Luke was one man watching her whole building that night. All he could do was watch the main doors from his vehicle parked beyond the lot. He had very incomplete coverage, no cameras, no additional eyes on the other doors of the building, and distance to impede him. Hindsight afforded them the knowledge that Kennedy knew Christian had been in contact with her, so he had likely kept an intentionally very low profile getting in and out of her building that night. Sawyer insisted that no one matching Kennedy's description went in or out of the main entrance of her building, and his car had not been in the lot... Kennedy must have snuck in- parked down the road and went in the back. There's only so much covert surveillance can catch, unfortunately. This isn't a movie where they have unlimited access to every detail about everybody's everything. They do the best they can, with what they have. Kennedy was a highly intelligent man, but he didn't even have to be, in order to devise a plan to get into a relatively low security building that he'd been to a million times, with ease. He'd had all the advantages that night, and he'd covered his tracks easily. There was really nothing Sawyer, in his limited capacities, could have done to ensure things had played out differently.

Christian wished he could put Sawyer on Ana now, in Montesano, but he was trying very hard to allow her to live the normal life she desperately deserved. So he settled for what everyone- Ana, Ray, and himself- could agree on. A state of the art home security system was installed in Ray's home. Christian had paid for it, but he had no access to it. Everything was in Ray's name, and only he and Ana had access to the alerts, to the cameras, to the codes. Its implementation did give Christian some peace of mind, though not nearly enough.

Because Scott Kennedy was still just out there. Still just living his life, like none of this had ever happened. And it infuriated Christian in such an intense way that he sometimes didn't even know what to do with himself when he thought about it. He'd gotten so worked up about the fact that that motherfucker was just freely roaming the streets that he'd destroyed more than a few expensive items when he'd hurled them at his office walls.

And roaming the streets? That was one thing. But the place Kennedy was really roaming that got Christian's blood pressure to skyrocket, was the halls of Grey House. His kingdom. His sanctuary. The place he loved more than anything because he'd built it from the ground up, the place he took pride in because within its walls, he was the biggest in an ocean of big fish. The place he now hated, because lurking within its walls was none other than the man he hated more than anything.

It had been momentarily vindicating when he'd gotten the report from Taylor that Kennedy had been completely blindsided by Ana's failure to show up at her apartment after she as released from the hospital. He hadn't been sure that everything would play out as they'd hoped, but instead, it had all worked out perfectly. And as sweet as it was knowing they'd foiled whatever plans Kennedy had for her homecoming, after they left him reeling in her empty apartment after learning that she wasn't coming back to him, the thrill didn't last long, because he was still just out there, and Christian hated knowing he was still a free, rich man living in luxury, not having paid for his crimes against Ana.

He'd tried everything he could think of the rectify that. He'd had multiple lawyers look over the contract he had Kennedy sign, trying to find some loophole to force him out, to at least make him lose the company he'd built from the ground up, the company he loved. Christian knew all too well how much that would hurt him. But when nothing could be found, he was quick to change tack, just looking for any way to severe ties with the company altogether. It wouldn't be as sweet in the way of revenge, but GHI would take a hit, and more importantly, at least Christian wouldn't have to deal with Kennedy being at Grey House any longer.

But nothing. When he got desperate, he had even been ready to offer Kennedy a buyout just to get rid of him, but despite how much he fucking hated it, Taylor had brought up the very good point that as long as he was a part of GEH, Christian had control over him. They'd know where he lived, where he worked. They could keep an eye on him. He if was free to leave, with a huge lump sum of money no less, he could go anywhere and do anything. Even go back to Montesano, a place he obviously was very family with. If he was here in Seattle, he was not near Ana, and that was a very real silver lining to a shitfest of a situation.

And so Scott Kennedy, Christian's number one most hated person on this planet, still worked for his company, still under the GEH umbrella. Christian refused to take meetings with him, instead forcing other staff to handle any and all business related to GHI. It was maddening, being in the same building as him, day in and day out. He did he best to just turn a blind eye to GHI and Kennedy's very existence. His main goal was to focus on things he could actually control. Which meant a whole hell of a lot of working.

But he was unhappy. That was blatant.

It sounded so menial, to just say, 'I'm unhappy.' But at the end of the day, when he laid down in his bed at night, that was what he felt. Legitimate unhappiness. He used to be happy. His life, before Ana, had been happy. So, theoretically, everything should have gone back to how it was then. Before Ana.

But that was the cavet, wasn't it? Not so much the fact that there was a 'before Ana', but the implication that there could then be an 'after Ana'. And there was an 'after Ana'. He was living it.

They barely communicated. He hadn't seen her since the move, though it took great restraint on his part to stop himself from going down to Montesano to see her. He'd offered once, the first weekend after she'd gone down, and she'd very gently told him no. She needed to focus on her therapy, on normalcy, without the added pressure of a relationship. He'd promised it wouldn't be like that, that he would put no pressure on her, but she'd told him that him being there, especially so soon, was pressure enough. So he'd done the only thing he could, he agreed not to visit. Until she told him she wanted to see him, until she made that first step, he would stay away, settling for the occasional email or text as communication with her.

Letting her go was one of the hardest things he'd ever found himself having to do. Physically she was already gone. But actually letting her go, letting go of the desires to see her, speak to her, be in her presence. These things were much more difficult that even he could have imagined. And he'd imagined them to be difficult.

He wanted her. God, did he want her. He wanted her heart, her mind, her body. He imagined having her in every single way, often. He imagined her curled up on couches with him watching movies. He imagined cupping her cheeks and kissing her sweet lips as he whispered corny but true confessions about his feelings. He imagined taking her to his bed and worshiping her from head to toe all night long. He wanted to experience everything with her, he wanted to experience life with her. The exciting, the mundane, the heavy, the delight, the pain, the love. He wanted the chance to know what it was like to have her at his side.

And yet he had nothing. Truly, he had no part of her. And when he had to remind himself of the reality of the situation, he was forced to admit that he never did. There might be something there, there might be feelings, but ultimately, there was nothing. Nothing that promised a future for them. She was off getting healthy, finding herself, learning to be happy. And with that would come new experiences for her, things she'd never gotten to do. She'd get the chance to get out and meet people, make friends, and who knows, maybe meet someone who meant more to her. He was facing a long separation from her, and he knew the likelihood of her finding someone close to her, someone more her age, someone more at her level, was fairly large.

Sometimes he even got caught up imaging how it could play out. He'd sit awake in bed at night and think about her, imagining her at a bookstore or a coffee shop. She's not paying attention. She bumps into someone. She's embarrassed, looking up, already apologizing profusely when her eyes make contact with his. She stops talking. He smiles. He's captivated, of course, by the beautiful face looking up at him, the big blue apologetic eyes meeting his own. There are sparks. They talk. The next thing they know, numbers are exchanged, then texts. A phone call. They meet up. They talk, maybe for hours. Things escalate. It just happens. She never planned it. But there it is.

She deserved to go out and live like a normal woman in her early twenties. He couldn't offer her that, not really. His life just wasn't conducive to that. With him, she'd have to be resigned to constant security surveillance, to paparazzi ambushes, to boring business dinners and events and galas filled with pretentious assholes vying for his attention. That was a far cry from the simple college life, where her biggest worries should be which bar to hit on Friday or whether or not she'd get her paper done. He didn't want to be yet another man who took that away from her, even if he knew he had much better intentions than Kennedy ever did.

He wanted her, but he didn't want to push her, didn't want to put too much pressure on her to make a decision about him that she wasn't ready to make. If she ever decided that what she truly wanted was him, she would have him in a heartbeat. But he couldn't push her. She had to be free to live her life as she needed to. That way, if and when she finally came to him, he would know it was because she saw what life had to offer and had decided that what she wanted most was him.

So, although she plagued his thoughts often, he tried to focus on living his life day by day, tried to be productive and not allow everything in his world to be consumed by the ghosts she left behind.

And some days, he did well enough.

And then days like today, he seemingly thought about nothing but her. And today, he ruminated on what the possibilities of living a normal life really meant for them, for their potential future once she was healthy. And today, he was obsessing about her sexual past.

When he'd been trying to help Ana out of the life she'd found herself stuck in, it had been more about removing her from Kennedy's clutches than removing her from BDSM lifestyle itself. But the two and gone had in hand when he'd been trying to do so, because she was only involved in it because of Kennedy, and was still actively involved with it because of him, so it made sense to just extricate herself from all of it in order to get away from him.

When he'd learned about her lifestyle, he'd only scratched the surface of learning about it, only reading enough to get a very basic grasp on what it was about, just to try and understand what she was talking about when she talked about it. But he hadn't gone too indepth, because he didn't need to know everything, or anything, about BDSM to know that what she was doing and how she'd been introduced to it was not in any way acceptable within that community. He'd felt that whatever BDSM really was didn't much matter, because he was sure that what Kennedy was doing to her wasn't the way it should have been.

But in the after, in the down time when Ana was safe, and he couldn't sleep at night and he thought about her, he let unpleasant thoughts fill his mind. Tonight was no exception. And tonight, a thought popped into his head out of nowhere. Why hadn't she run for the hills when Kennedy introduced her to BDSM? She'd been only fifteen at the time. An awkward, fifteen year old virgin. Why hadn't she completely freaked out when this older man offered her not only sex, but sex that involved being completely out of control, that involved physical punishment? What if she really did like BDSM? Where would that leave him, in the future?

The thought had led him to the inevitable- he found himself on the internet, looking up articles about what BDSM really was. It had opened up a can of worms to say the least. Articles led to pictures which led to videos. Before he knew it, he was perusing dark reaches of the internet, watching things that horrified him. The content inevitably had him wondering what exactly she'd done with Kennedy, and how, if she ever chose to be with him, he could compete with any of this. He wanted no part of this, himself, but part of him wondered if she would. Even after she was in a better place mentally, what if she still wanted this kind of sexual relationship? Would the idea of a normal sex be unappealing to her after everything she'd experienced? Afterall, it was something many people did under safe and consensual guidelines. Maybe Ana would still seek this out once she was healthy. Maybe she'd still want this, but with a respectful Dominant.

He tortured himself as he imagined scenarios where he finally had her in his arms, in his bed, and while he experienced the most mind blowing sex of his life, she laid there, bored and unsatisfied. It reminded him of a the memory of the one time he really did have her in his bed. She'd been silent and still then. At the time he'd attributed it to her not being ready for that step between them, but now, he wondered if she really had just been bored with what he'd had to offer her sexually.

He groaned, and the masochist in him had him clicking on video after video, watching submissives being tied up every which way, hit with things he'd never seen before, and fucked so hard he could barely stand to watch it.

It was like he was on autopilot while he was watching. Click*click*click. He just watched more and more, whatever he came across. He watched instructional videos, and he watched hardcore scenes. Sometimes he was sure the videos were all a setup, were just pornography. But sometimes the videos were amateurish, and he knew he was watching real play being practiced by real people. He just kept watching whatever he came across.

He'd somehow ended up on Tumblr, where one of the pages he was on had him stopping cold. There was a picture. He did a double take, because at first glance it definitely looked like it could be Ana. It was taken at a distance, a petite brunette waited on her knees, her arms straight down behind her back, chest jutted forward, nipples perky, back arched in a gentle, feminine curves down her to naked behind where it rested on her bare feet. Her head was tilted toward the floor, and she was blindfolded, a ballgag in her mouth, wearing a thick, black collar around her neck. It could have been anyone, really. The features were hard to discern because it wasn't up close, and it looked as though it was taken when a soft focus lense.

But the fact that it could be Ana had him reeling. What if Kennedy had pictures, videos of her? Even if he'd never posted them online, what if he had them at home, where he could watch them at his leisure?

Christian felt his gut roil at the thought. He clicked the picture, finding its origin, and scrolled through the content of the page. More images of the petite brunette flooded the screen, and Christian caught himself warring between looking and not looking. It might not be Ana, but if it was, he felt uncomfortable looking at the images of her like this, without her permission. It felt dirty and wrong. But in the end, he couldn't help himself.

She had a large blindfold on in every single picture, and none of them were particularly crisp clean images. She was in all different manners of positions, bound and gagged in all of them, making it even harder to distinguish her true facial features. He'd only really seen her body once, and it had been dark. He hadn't had the chance to memorize it the way he wished he could have, so he just couldn't rule out the possibility of this being Ana one way or the other. But he had to admit, the pictures held a dark but beautiful quality, the woman flawless in all of them, perfectly positioned, her body always twisted in a flattering way. It was art, really. Kinky, sexualized art.

Closing out the browser, he had a new mission. If Scott had images of Ana, he wouldn't for much longer.

Picking up his phone, he dialed Welch's number.

"Mr. Grey?"

"Welch. I need you to get together with Barney find a way into Kennedy's personal computers, phone, iPad, whatever. I want every electronic device he owns to be searched for pictures and videos of Anastasia. I want everything wiped clean. No copies. I want them gone."

"Can do, sir. However, I should warn you there's a likelihood that if he has images saved of her, he probably has hardcopies or external drives with them downloaded. They are probably not just sitting on his laptop, sir. Or at least not strictly."

Fuck, he hadn't thought about that…

"I'll inform Taylor, then you can get with him on a plan for a scouting mission of Mr. Kennedy's home," he ordered.

"Yes, sir," Welch agreed.

If there was something to find, they were damn well going to find it.