I was reviewing reports in my study, trying to focus on pack business when every part of me wanted to go upstairs and knock on her door.Tell her I understood why she had left.Tell her that whatever she needed from me, she could have it.Tell her that I would wait as long as it took for her to come to me again.
Petrov’s name flashed on my screen.
“They found a body at the hotel.”His voice was different now.Tight.“You need to come now.”
I was out the door before he finished the sentence.
The drive to the Hughes Palace was twenty minutes.I made it in twelve.
Viktor sat in the passenger seat, silent as always, his silver-streaked hair catching the morning light.He had been waiting at the manor when Petrov called, as if he had sensed something was wrong.That was Viktor.He always knew.
“The staff are saying it’s the florist,” Viktor said as I pulled into the hotel’s back lot.
Stephanie.The woman who had always had fresh flowers on Lena’s desk, who had helped her with the hotel’s event planning.Lena liked her.
My wolf keened.
Police cars clustered near the service entrance.Uniformed officers milled about, yellow tape already strung across the door to what I knew was the staff area behind the ballroom.The lobby still carried the faint metallic residue of yesterday’s blood fountain, the hazmat cleaning not quite able to erase it from my senses.
Petrov met us at the door.“This way.I’ve kept the staff back, but the police are already inside.”
I followed him through the back corridors, my wolf pacing beneath my skin, hackles raised.Every instinct I had screamed to hunt, to find, to destroy.This was my territory now.More than that, this was hers.The woman my wolf had claimed whether she accepted it or not.Someone had spilled blood where she worked, where she built her legacy, and that offense demanded an answer.
The body was in a storage room behind the florist shop.
Stephanie lay on the concrete floor, her eyes open and staring at nothing.The smell hit me first.Blood and fear and the harsh bite of cleaning supplies that surrounded her.
The blood.My wolf went rigid with recognition.The same signature as the fountain, that specific metallic sweetness unique to every person.They’d used Stephanie’s blood to terrorize the hotel before they killed her.
And underneath that, another scent.A trace I couldn’t quite place.
My eyes burned.
The shift tried to push through, my irises threatening to change from gray to amber, heat building behind my skull as my wolf fought for control.Viktor stepped in front of me, blocking the view of the officers taking photos and the detective speaking with hotel staff.
“Control yourself,” he said quietly.“Not here.”
I closed my eyes.Breathed through my mouth.Forced the wolf back down with an effort that left me shaking.
“This wasn’t professional,” I managed when I could speak.“Too messy.Too personal.”
“No forced entry,” Petrov confirmed.“She knew whoever did this.”
Inside job.The words echoed in my head as I scanned the room again, trying to see what my eyes might have missed while my wolf was raging.Stephanie had been killed here, in the hotel, by someone who had access and who she trusted enough to meet alone.
That scent.The one I couldn’t identify.It was familiar, a trace I had encountered a hundred times but never paid attention to.
I filed it away.My wolf growled in frustration, unable to place it.
Michael arrived then, pushing through the police line with the authority of a man who ran this building.His face went pale the moment he saw the storage room, his eyes widening as he took in the scene.
“Oh God.”His voice cracked.“Stephanie.Oh my God.”
He turned away, one hand covering his mouth, the other bracing against the doorframe.His shoulders shook with what looked like genuine sobs.The general manager had worked alongside her for years, had coordinated flower orders and event planning and a hundred small daily interactions.
I watched him carefully, the way I watched everyone.Looking for the hesitation before the shock, the micro-expression that didn’t match the words.Years in the Bratva had taught me to read grief like a language.Real loss had a particular rhythm to it.The hitched breathing.The way the body curled inward as if protecting itself from a blow already landed.
Michael’s grief was authentic.His hands trembled when he lowered them from his face.His eyes, when he finally turned back to the room, held the hollow look of a man recalculating a world that had just lost someone from it.
